Smoke in the Sun

Eh, it was okay. It's not really original if you've read stories set in feudal Japan or anything involving court politics before, but the writing is okay and the staccato sentences make it a quick read. The ending is kinda rushed, not to mention it leaves many questions unanswered, but I don't like any of the characters enough to care.

You just have to turn off your brain temporarily so you don't tsukkomi every single thing, which gets really annoying since there's just so many things that are obviously not Japanese culture done right. A bit better than the first book, but some of these things can be easily learned simply by Googling...

Hirata Suke is an atrocious name though. Not only -suke is an attachment and not a name on its own (just like the -maru in Ranmaru), but it is only used in male names too. The poor creature who got Suke as a given name in this book is a girl, so that's like double offense for me and I can't take it seriously.