It's my understanding that samurai novels are very popular in Japan and rather overlooked in English translation. As a Japanese to English translator I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but I've never actually read a samurai novel before because I tend to read works that take place in more contemporary time periods when I read in Japanese. So this book was really cool.

There's a lot of action, but at the same time the pacing is really slow and casual? I didn't feel a lot of nervousness or anticipation while reading because the main character, whose perspective the story is told in, is just so calm about everything and the descriptions of him even when he's angry are extremely calm.

That being said it's still a samurai novel. There are swords and people are murdered and executed and all of that kind of stuff happens. It's just not really intense when it does. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I thought this book was really cool and it would be super awesome if more of this kind of stuff got translated into English for people to read.