Deftly interweaving feudal Japanese history with a richly imagined fantasy universe, Across the Nightingale Floor tells an epic saga of assassins, honour and forbidden love with exhilarating pace and momentum. Sharp and violent yet delicate and poised, the opening volume of The Tales of the Otori sequence is mesmerisingly good.
Lian Hearn's stunningly powerful bestseller, Across the Nightingale Floor, is an epic story for readers young and old. Set in a mythical, feudal, Japanese land, a world both beautiful and cruel, the intense love story of two young people takes place against a background of warring clans, secret alliances, high honour and lightning swordplay.
In his palace at Inuyama, Lord Iida Sadamu, warlord of the Tohan clan, surveys his famous nightingale floor. Its surface sings at the tread of every human foot, and no assassin can cross it. But sixteen-year-old Otori Takeo, his family murdered by Iida's warriors, has the magical skills of the Tribe - preternatural hearing, invisibility, a second self - that enable him to enter the lair of the Tohan. He has love in his heart and death at his fingertips . . .
The first novel in the epic Tales of the Otori series, Across the Nightingale Floor is followed by Grass For His Pillow and Brilliance of the Moon.
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781509837809
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 210 g
Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 20 mm
Across the Nightingale Floor remains quite simply the best story of magic, love, sex, revenge and suspense to have come this way since Philip Pullman. - Independent on Sunday
Across the Nightingale Floor was described to me by the young man in Borders bookshop as a "Japanese Harry Potter, only better". In fact, it's a different beast entirely. Much darker, much sharper, much less predictable. - Daily Telegraph
I first read this as a 12-year-old, and instantly fell in love.with the characters, the story, the setting and the sheer imagination wrapped up in this book. Reading it again as an 18-year-old, I can safely say that... More
(*ignoring Harry Potter; that's a given)
These books are enchanting! Set in feudal Japan, they follow the lives of Otori Takeo (a young sixteen year old, whose parents are brutally murdered by leader of the...
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Across the Nightingale Floor is set in an imaginary medieval Japan: we follow the parallel stories of Takeo and Kaede in the middle of a great battle between many clans. The two young people have their role to play in... More
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