Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otori Book One
Ratings55
Average rating3.8
An international bestseller, Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book in the Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn. Don't miss the related series, The Tale of Shikanoko. In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard. The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordinary, preternatural skills. When Takeo's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru. Under the tutelage of Shigeru, he learns that he too possesses the skills of the Tribe. And, with this knowledge, he embarks on a journey that will lead him across the famed nightingale floor—and to his own unimaginable destiny...
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6 primary books7 released booksTales of the Otori
Tales of the Otori is a 7-book series with 6 primary works first released in 2002 with contributions by Lian Hearn.
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Across the Nightingale Floor has a beautiful, concise writing style, good characterization, fast pace, and interesting plot. It's main weakness is the ridiculousness of the love-at-first-sight. It makes the characters seem a bit shallow.
Warning about the audiobook: I listened to this book on CD. There are two readers ??? a man for the voice of Takeo, and a woman for the voice of Kaede. The man is an excellent reader with a lovely voice (he's got the oriental speech sounds just right). I think his reading made me sympathize with Takeo more than I would have if I had read the book in print format. But the female reader was terrible ??? she speaks slowly and too distinctly, as if she's reading to kindergartners. This was extremely annoying! Fortunately, most of the book is written with Takeo's narration, so her reading didn't ruin it for me. Also, I think, as an American reader, I might have benefited from actually seeing the oriental names, rather than only hearing them. It took me a while to distinguish between some of the names because they were all unfamiliar to me and ... (sorry) they all sounded too similar at first. If you're planning to read this series, read it in print, not by audio.
Read more Lian Hearn book reviews at Fantasy literature.
A fun engrossing read with just enough fantasy to keep me wanting more secret ninja action.
This is one of my favorite books related to the Samurai genre, up there with the movie Seven Samurai. The plot is well designed, the characters have good depths and personalities, there are wonderful interactions between them, some nail biting action sequences and suspense. It also has strong females which I suspect were not that common when it was written.
But most of all I'm drawn to the idea of a ‘nightingale' floor and had the good fortune to read this before actually experiencing a floor that made unique sounds as people moved about the floor. I'm not sure I would want to live in a house that did alot of groaning but I grew to love the sound of that floor and miss it and the community associated with it.
