A huge disappointment.

This didn’t click with me at all. Which is a bummer, man. Because: Samurai! Detectives! I love those two things. And combined?! Take my money.

But.

The prose is utilitarian. And its episodic nature—the stories were originally serialized, which is probably its ideal format—means there’s no panoptic cohesion. Everything about it just felt clunky. Which is a shame, because the characters are interesting, and distinct: Akiyama Daijiro who runs a blade school; his father Akiyama Kohei, a skilled swordsman; and a female warrior, and daughter of the shogunate Sasaki, Tanuma Mifiyu. The setting, too: Japan in the late 1700s, during the Edo period.

The ingredients for something special are here, and maybe it’s just my palette, but I won’t be indulging in Volume 2.