Thursday, November 09, 2006

Book-A-Day #115 (11/8): Path of the Assassin, Vol. 2: Sand and Flower by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima

I have to admit the politics in this series are sometimes flying over my head (there's a whole bunch of people scheming, and we haven't seen most of them on panel -- or maybe it's just that I can't tell who these guys are when they do appear on panel -- so we get long dialogue balloons that go something like Maxwell Smart's "I've got the edge" speech).

The pictures are very nice, and the portrait of two men -- one young nobleman essentially under house arrest, who just wants to take it easy but is gradually learning he has a great capacity for intrigue, and his ninja keeper/bodyguard/best friend -- is great. And Koike takes advantage of all of the intricacies of the old bushido honor code (as far as I can tell; he clearly knows this stuff much better than I do) to tell interestingly gnarly stories.

I just hope I get better at figuring out who everybody is, and what all of the intrigue means, as the series goes on.

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