Rindis.com

The second Tomoe Goezen book is in the same format as the first: Four nearly independent novellas under one cover, with no more than scene breaks within them. Like last time, they are different stories, with different tones, but there is an overall arc that ties the four together.

The episodic nature is made a bit more pronounced here by many (but not all) of the secondary characters from the first volume being absent here. Japanese myth is still ever-present in this world, and continues to be an important way of how the world and story works. This time we also have the Gempei War, or at least a good susbititute, and that forms the arc that ties the book together, as she ends up married to the ambitious Lord Kiso (Minamoto no Yoshinaka) in the first part, and his attempt to set up his own Shogunate is the background to the second part and the focus of the third.

Tomoe is much more distant as a character in this book, which certainly drags it down some, as well as the fact that there’s large chunks where she is more acted upon than acting. A problem particular to my Kindle edition, is that the publisher put an ad for themselves right after the third and final part… which can easily obscure that there is an epilogue after that which is nearly as extensive as the main three parts.