Wee Review of Month

Review of “Samurai” by Jason Hightman

So… basically dragons are real - and not nice in the least. They prowl around the planet in the guise of humans causing disease, famine and the occasional plane crash - if they’re bored. They feed on the suffering of humans, and are generally unfriendly.

Simon St Gorge (the descendant of the Englishman himself) and his father hunt the dragons. Accompanied by the magician Alaythia they track them down and slay them in elaborate battles with machine-gun crossbows. But, Alaythia discovers she had become a liability and can reveal their whereabouts to all of dragon kind. She leaves in the night and the Dragonhunters chase her to Japan where they discover the Samurai and fight The Japanese Dragon in the most far-fetched battle yet - spanning several chapters.

But the Dragon of Japan has an ace up his sleeve…

The story in essence is really good. All I needed was the sadistic dragons to give it an edge, but they way it’s told was slightly disappointing. At the start it seemed disjointed; it was fast-paced like he was writing on a time limit. This carried on in the book a bit with the writing lacking depth. Descriptions were sparse; there was a lot of plot and not much detail. The book seemed, to me, to be in a rush to get to the next fight scene. However, the fights were suitably face-paced and exciting. The enemies were perfect, evil and cruel and each had an interesting, individual character with their own quirks. Shame the protagonists couldn’t have the depth the baddies had.

The book feels like anime. Elaborate, drawn-out fights with shallow characters and Samurai with suction-cups up their sleeves. But of course this formula works very well as we know and the book is gripping and fascinating by the end.

Chris Stevenson, S6

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