Title: Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori, Book 1 Author: Lian Hearn Publisher: Hodder Headline It’s not often you see the first instalment of a new series receive as much attention as Across the Nightingale Floor. The first volume of Lian Hearn’s Otori series comes with a certain amount of baggage dealt with best by clicking here for the full story. Amid the hoopla about who Hearn is, it’s possible to lose sight of the writing itself and, as a big fan of text-oriented literary criticism, I’m more than willing to look solely at the book and save the authorial intent for when they come to make the film. The basics? Set in medieval Japan, the novel opens in an idyllic setting that soon turns bloody with the massacre of young Takeo’s fellow villagers. Takeo hooks up with a mysterious and magical lord who treats him as if he were his own son. Over the next few years, we observe the integration of Takeo into Lord Shigeru’s tribe and his blooming as a master of combat skills and the more-supernatural ways of The Tribe, a renegade group of skilful warriors, all in preparation to revenge the death of his and Lord Shigeru’s families. In between there’s a double love story, double and triple-crossing, and a family reunion that makes the Mansons look like the Waltons. Across the Nightingale Floor has been described as Crouching Tiger meets Lord of the Rings, and that’s not too far from the truth. Like the Ang Lee film, Hearn skilfully blends mystery with romance, tradition with tear-em-down sword fights. Similarly, like Tolkein’s novels, Across is easy to read, never too confusing, and moving at a pace that doesn’t often drag. However, as with all three, we’re not looking at highbrow material, and at no stage is the reader challenged to contemplate their opinions or really disidentify with the protagonist. Nevertheless, both Tolkein’s and Lee’s have entered into contemporary “classicdom”, revered by many, so perhaps innovation is neither what the text is aiming for, nor what the audience want. So if a package of martial arts, family squabbles and the requisite amount of action and romance, sounds like what you want, there’s no harm in getting stuck into this, and then waiting for the following two to be published in 2003/4.