Friday 9 September 2011

Wind of Justice

The third Scroll of the Four Winds Saga, detailing Hantei Naseu, youngest of Toturi's offspring. Wind of Justice is widely considered the best of the L5R novels, and the only one to be considered automatically canon.

Meh!!!

That all I have to say really.

Still reading this?

I guess I should dispense some words of wisdom then...

"If you believe in yourself, stay in milk, drink all your school, don't do sleep, and get eight hours of drugs!"

Better now?

So you still want to know about Wind of Justice eh?

Well, in my not so humble opinion meh is very much an apt description of it. It's not a bad book per se, at least not in the sense The Phoenix or The Unicorn (we do not speak of Wind of War), but I have wonder if the praise heaped on this book is not just merely a reflection of the fact that it was writen by the Story Team lead during is tenure.

It undoubtful that Wind of Justice is the novel that most smoothly fits canon (it is fact the only novel that seamlessly fits it), but there is very little to aplaud here beyond that.

For the most part is just yet another standard action adventure romp. Competently done, but formulaic, there is very little that makes Naseru stand out, altough to be fair I'm not so sure that isn't the intent.

Reputedly Naseru is a master politician, but the problem is that masterminds are particularly hard to write, so the action adventure trappings might be a way to avoid that problem while still mantaining Naseru's aura of command, and who knows, even giving him some aditional fan cred by allowing him to display traditional samurai virtues of physical courage.

If that was the case I suppose that Wind of Justice achieved it's aim.

Comparing it with the previous Four Winds novels it is definitely superior because it managed to present convincing villains. The Tsuno, while irredeemably evil have undertandable motivations are competent and, more importantly,, capable opponents, something that Junnosuke and the Scorpion lacked in the previous scrolls.

So again we have a novel that I have a hard time recommending to anyone other than a completist. If you're not bothered by standard gaming novel fare, and like L5R, it might be worth your money but for the most part it's forgettable stuff.

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