Bernice's Reviews > Musashi

4.5 ⭐️

"By attempting to follow me in death, you may find that you are dying alone. You may look for me in the world beyond only to find that I'm not there. I intend to live on for a hundred or a thousand years- in the hearts of my countrymen, in the spirit of Japanese swordsmanship"

Musashi is a fictional account of a real life samurai who lived in the 16th century. Going by this book the samurai era was a crazy period; someone dishonors you you kill them, want to test your swordsmanship skills and see if you've gotten stronger? fight to death. So as you can imagine by the time we get to the end of the book a lot of people die. However, the book is not always bleak, at some point it covers the deeper meaning behind the Way of the Sword, there's love affairs here and there and lots of memorable characters; Osugi, Otsu, Akemi, Matahachi but then again there were so many characters I couldn't remember. I think the author did a great job bringing out Japan's culture and history at the time. It was a bit confusing at times but for someone with some knowledge of Japan's history it should be easy to get through.

A very gripping read and it was hard to put down.