Rise of the Master Mage: The Masterless Sword Book 2

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If you like action, A Kingdom's Cost has it. Aside from the struggle and action, the descriptions of the Scottish countryside has further fueled my desire to see the land itself. Like many, all I know of Robert the Bruce, is from the move Braveheart. This, post-Braveheart historical fiction lends color and depth to the man and to the Scottish struggle to regain their independence after the British asserted their sovereignty over them. Like all wars of conquest and genocide, the English wars to dominate the Gaels of Wales, Scotland and Ireland were typified by brutality that modern readers can scarcely comprehend, even when we read of similar acts in the Balkans, Africa, and where ISIS asserts itself.

Is it really any wonder that Sassenach is still a racial epithet in Scotland, Ireland and Wales today? Bishop's War is Good Fun This is an action packed story from end to end. Not once was I disappointed or felt the desire to jump over some section of the book. For me, this was a goldilocks book - just the right amount of detail and not too much. Could be a good action flick if they ever make it into a movie.

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Being a Marine, I felt there was a little too much credit given to the Green Berets, but that is just my institutional bias coming through. Tom Sheppard rated a book it was amazing Twisted: I like fairy tales done differently The author's retelling of the story of Rumpelstitltskin is well done.

Unlike Tanith Lee, who likes to take a fairy tale and turn it about degrees from a Disney story, this tale follows the classic story pretty w I like fairy tales done differently The author's retelling of the story of Rumpelstitltskin is well done. Unlike Tanith Lee, who likes to take a fairy tale and turn it about degrees from a Disney story, this tale follows the classic story pretty well, while adding depth and motives to the characters which is never evident in the story by the Grimms.

The are no wholly evil or wholly good characters here. Just flawed creatures each trying to find lasting happiness and, like many of us, mucking it up pretty badly. It is a good story, well told. Zero is no zero If you value getting a full night's sleep every night, then don't read this book. It kept me up at night. The author has a wonderful imagination for creating a universe of horrific creatures and a compelling protagonist to drive the ac Zero is no zero If you value getting a full night's sleep every night, then don't read this book.

The author has a wonderful imagination for creating a universe of horrific creatures and a compelling protagonist to drive the action. The plot and the story are well constructed and the storyline kept me reading long after my eyes were blurring and my body craved sleep. There are some neat plot twists that made me mad. Good for you Sara King! Keep up the good work!

Oh, and if you happened to get this book for free A word of warning, this is not one of those so-called "books" that are really only an opening few chapters, designed to suck you in. This is a full-fledged story and full-length novel. Despite its bigger than average size, the pace never slacked off, start to finish. Tom Sheppard rated a book it was amazing Hero of the Empire: Churchill Revealed "All Winston's faults are revealed in the instant of meeting him.

Then you spend a lifetime uncovering his virtues. Good Read, a little jumpy though The story is captivating. It jumps a bit, not flowing as smoothly as it might, but that may be an artifact of what Frey is going through more than any failure of the author.

It has me wanting to move on to the next vol Good Read, a little jumpy though The story is captivating. It has me wanting to move on to the next volume. Tom Sheppard rated a book it was amazing The Iron Brigade: Interesting piece of history This short read fills in some interesting gaps in the story of the US Civil War. It describes the sort of stubborn tenacity exhibited by mid westerners at all junctures in US history where they have been called upon to fig Interesting piece of history This short read fills in some interesting gaps in the story of the US Civil War.

It describes the sort of stubborn tenacity exhibited by mid westerners at all junctures in US history where they have been called upon to fight in defense of their country. Tom Sheppard rated a book it was amazing Free Will: A Cogent Response The author aptly points out where Sam Harris accepts one form of evidence to support his conclusions and then turns around and dismisses the same form of evidence when it contradicts his desired conclusions.

If our society embraced this tripe as scientific truth, civilization would dissolve because no one could be held accountable for their actions. The Hidden Fortress Year: Initially told from the point of view of two bumbling, quarrelsome civilians Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara who are lured into the thick of a war zone by the promise of gold, the story soon finds them running afoul of two opposing clans.

There is a noble samurai general Toshiro Mifune, galloping full tilt to slay opponents and engaging a rival in an honor duel with spears and a princess in disguise fighting to oppose an overwhelming army Misa Uehara. And, like its cinematic successor, it ends with a triumph, though a small one, that promises the good guys will fight on.

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Heaven and Earth Ten to Chi to Year: Based on a ferocious rivalry between two larger-than-life historical samurai, Heaven and Earth is a lavish war movie. Portraying young samurai Kagetora Takaaki Enoki as an earnest nobleman seeking to protect his kingdom from the invading warlord Takeda Shingen Masahiko Tsugawa , the story follows the ups and downs of his leadership.

After the maneuvering, the treachery and the clash of armies, it all builds to exactly the inevitable showdown you hope it does: Two guys in head-to-toe armor with swords slugging it out on horseback in the middle of a shallow river. The Master Spearman Year: Granted a last minute reprieve from joining his lord in death, he elects for a late life of earthly pleasures. He flatly states the chivalric samurai code of bushido is for fools when a family members demands he take his own life and end the embarrassment to his clan.

Uchida was stranded in occupied Manchuria for nearly a decade following the Second World War, a time of his life about which little has been written. His pre-war work barely survives and by all accounts is filled with weird stylistic and political inconsistency. When Shingen is mortally wounded in the course of his war for supremacy over Japan, he orders that his decoy take his place and his death be kept secret for three years for the good of the clan. It will end tragically, of course. That means accepting his fate as well. Legend of the Eight Samurai Year: This film feels a bit like it was conceived by a child, but at least it was a kid with a very active imagination.

A colorful, overlong minutes?!? This is a film that should be viewed either late at night with a bunch of whiskey or early in the morning with a bunch of sugar cereal. Naming himself shogun, Ieyasu and his heirs would hold dominion over Japan for nearly three centuries—longer, as of this writing, than the United States has been a sovereign country. Ieyasu moved most of the government from Kyoto to Edo present-day Tokyo , and so this time in history is called the Edo or the Tokugawa period.

With the sudden end of constant war, the samurai class slowly became unmoored. At the same time, Tokugawa declared that Japan would be largely closed to outsiders and that a person could not leave the social class into which he or she was born, facts that contributed to the feeling of society becoming static. Films set in this period wallow in existential uncertainty and cloying social convention. A few of his contemporaries became icons, like Seijun Suzuki, Yosujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa , who all broke free from their expectations as studio filmmakers to exercise a new creative freedom apart from tradition.

They created their own traditions, building myths from the ruins of their reality. And, in tune with the best chambara the decade had to offer, his fight is a spectacularly beautiful one. The 47 Ronin Year: In case it bears mentioning: This is The 47 Ronin , not 47 Ronin. We love you lots, but lord above, that was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad movie. Basically, back in the 18th century in Japan, a company of samurai, left leaderless and disgraced when law compelled their lord to commit seppuku , decided to team up and get revenge for his death.

Through grandeur of craft rather than through grandeur of awful, pixelated FX. Based on historical events, the story follows a young lord in the 18th Century who is killed due to court intrigue and his 47 samurai retainers stripped of their titles and made to be ronin.

The 50 Best Samurai Films of All Time

The honorable thing to do in such cases is normally to just commit seppuku and join your lord in death. It is very slow, plodding, and the action comes seemingly from out of nowhere. Even when lined up in this list, it still may be one of the most quintessentially Japanese films you ever see.

A wandering ronin strides into a mean, dying town and into the middle of a blood feud between two gangs. Yojimbo essentially introduced chambara to the West, burning the blueprint of the amoral, individualistic antihero at odds with the chivalric samurai mold into the minds of the Westerners who would eagerly pay it homage.

But resolute as his character is, the film ends with Mifune telling a terrified young underling who earlier insisted on living fast and dying young the most important lesson: Whether you prefer Sanjuro to Yojimbo depends on the particularities of your tastes, sort of like whether you prefer Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello.

Sanjuro is about swagger, the mythological facade a person builds for themselves to dazzle and captivate onlookers. As opposed to the steely, cunning, relentlessly vicious Sanjuro of Yojimbo , the Sanjuro of Sanjuro is confident to the point of coming off as a roguish loudmouth, a Japanese forebear to American characters such as Ash Williams.

But the swordsman-trickster we meet in Sanjuro feels like a braggart: The Tale of Zatoichi Year: The fact that he can, that his meekness is just a deception hiding an unstoppable, righteous whirlwind of dismemberment, is the reason The Tale of Zatoichi spawned 26 films, the vast majority of them starring Katsu in the title role. The stories wallow in the dirt and danger of the Edo Period, when crime and intrigue replaced the war and treachery of the samurai as the greatest dangers to the common folk.

The zato , or anma masseurs, a role traditionally for the blind , of feudal Japan were considered lowly and servile. This inaugural romp sees Ichi hired by local toughs as the ringer in a gang war, and introduces the world to his humble-looking walking stick and the nasty blade it conceals.

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Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo Year: Revenge of a Kabuki Actor Year: Amidst the unrest and corruption of the late Edo Period, the famous kabuki actor Yukinojo Kazuo Hasegawa, reprising his role from an original production , who specializes in portraying women encounters the men who drove his mother and father to madness and suicide. He puts his lifetime of training in stage and the sword to use, sowing the distrust that will drive his enemies to madness, penury, and ruin. Revenge of a Kabuki Actor is no less weird and dreamlike if you happen to know that during the Edo Period, actors like Yukinojo were required to dress and act like women even when not on stage.

The staging makes use of isolated set dressings and lighting that leaves the surroundings cloaked in shadow, evoking the art form Yukinojo uses to beguile and destroy his enemies. Obstacles standing in the way of his revenge. Yukinojo does it backwards in heels. Gonza the Spearman Year: Gonza the Spearman is set in , more than a hundred years into the Edo period, when samurai wondered just what a warrior is when he has no war to fight.

Inevitably, their passions, desires and petty grievances are punished by the stifling, unforgiving way of life under the shogun, in which performing an intricate tea ceremony improperly can bring dishonor to a perfectly capable samurai. There is only one scene of violence in Gonza , long-delayed but as sickeningly inevitable as it is graphic. The movie ends on that same ridiculously intricate tea ceremony, and the face of an orphaned girl as she impassively pretends that all of this is just fine.

Red Beard Akahige Year: A young aspiring doctor shows up at his clinic, learns that he is to be apprenticed there, and sees the utterly miserable state of the destitute people Akahige takes in. His presence, and the respect his patients have for him, is felt before he finally invites his young, reluctant apprentice into the room and gives him a long, severe stare from behind a truly epic beard.

The Lone Wolf and Cub Series a. Early on, Itto makes his oblivious son choose between a bitter life of vengeance or the sweet, sweet release of death by putting a sword and a ball on the floor and observing which token the infant crawls toward. Itto foreswears all honor and propriety to walk a path of certain damnation.

Across six ultraviolent films, that way is long and paved with his butchered foes. After the Rain Year: Surely not every wandering ronin was a terse, violent jerk. As heavy rains trap them in a town, Ihei keeps running afoul of situations that demand he draw his sword despite his peaceful and easygoing nature. After the Rain is a movie about decency and how it can get an honest man in trouble in a cynical time.

Dora-heita winks at the audience from the beginning, and has the good sense to keep the blood to a minimum so as not to spoil the fun. The movie knows that in a world of pimps and mobsters, the men in that room are the real villains. The fact Koheita never once wets his blade with the blood of his enemies—preferring either intricate judo or the blunt edge of his sword—is just one more cathartic insult to his foes. For a samurai, death is glorious, but the indignity of a good spanking is universal.

Toshiro Mifune returns as the lowly but determined ronin Niiro, the bastard of an unnamed lord whose only ambition is to make a name for himself at any cost. The film is guilty of dumping a lot of exposition through uninterestingly shot dialogue, but it all culminates in a truly gruesome melee, with dozens of swordsmen trading chaotic blows amidst a snowstorm. Viewers may see the awful, Arthurian twist coming long before it arrives, but the grim message of the story still hits hard: The film follows an itinerant, layabout swordsman named Kiba played by a then-fledgling Isao Natsuyagi who is contracted by a blind waystation boss to protect a shipment of gold from a competing group of assassin couriers.

Gosha never managed to achieve the level of esteem and recognition bestowed on the likes of Kurosawa, but the years since his passing in have seen a significant reappraisal of his work.

1. The Poems and Plays of Isaac Rosenberg: A Critical Edition (Oxford English Texts);
2. Death at Christy Burkes: A Mystery (Collins-Burke Mystery).
3. The Exiles Next Door: Singing the Lords Song in a Foreign Land.
4. La Communauté: Tome 2 : La rébellion des femmes  (- SDE) (French Edition).
5. Round and Round and Round.

Let no one hesitate to ever include Tatsuya Nakadai in all discussions regarding the greatest Japanese actors of his era, so indelible is his voice, his stare, his impregnable presence: Be it the beleaguered father of Harakiri or the ambitious demagogue of Hitokiri not to mention in era-defining works from Ichikawa, Okomoto and Teshigahara , within incomprehensibly constricted amounts of industry time, Nakadai came to embody the infinitely subtle gradations of the period film, the ways in which Japanese directors especially were able to work inside the studio system to both define and completely reimagine what genre film could be.

The Seven Samurai Year: Have superhero movies burned you out? Do you need a break from big-screen commotions involving costumed men and women flying about all higgledy piggledy, blasting one another with computer-generated energy blasts or slugging it out with their bare hands? Are you itching to place the blame for the modern theatrical glut of comic book franchise films somewhere? With Zatoichi , he manages to do all three at once and have a grand old time in the process.

Just … goose bumps. Incident at Blood Pass Year: Between duty and the deeper demands of an emotional life, what is really worth fighting for? Sword of the Beast Year: Man, Hideo Gosha sure does have a thing for rogue samurai and the revenge they visit upon the corrupt. The good news is that Gennosuke is a pretty darn good fighter. And how many samurai movies are there in existence where a wandering samurai, who is either masterless, unscrupulous, jaded, or some combination of the three, decides to involve himself in the travails of warring clans and elected officials?

Quite a lot, it turns out, and some of them happen to be based on the same source novel as one another. The Samurai Trilogy Years: Musashi Miyamoto , opened in , the same year as Seven Samurai. The films alternate between mediation and action, both in context as individual movies and as parts of a greater whole; Samurai II: