Moribito

I decided to add a review after my second time through which I think I enjoyed more than my first. That was several years ago now and I only have a vague sense left of how much I enjoyed it.

Obviously, well worth a second visit after a few years.

For those of you who are new, the Moribito series is ten books, but only two have been translated into English. (And there are a legion of people in the Otaku community who think this is about as unjust as it gets.)

The Story centers around Balsa, a warrior-woman, who works as a bodyguard. She lives in a society where this is very unusual. People naturally are surprised by this, but if they see her at work with her spear, they see first hand her reputation is well earned.

The world-building is based on an unseen world and the seen world, existing side by side, separate, but effecting each other on a regular basis. The seen world is a medieval kingdom. Naturally, its construction is along Japanese or even Chinese medievalism, not Western European versions. Magic is the five sided, Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Wood variety and is dying out.

The story starts with Balsa being very much herself and jumping into a raging river to save the Second Prince of the Kingdom, who has just fallen in. Something very magical and unexpected happens mid-rescue. Balsa is then asked (which in their social system is an order) to the palace. The second Queen asks Balsa to take money, the prince, and flee; she asked her to be his bodyguard against his own father and the machination of the royal court.

Balsa, for her own reasons, agrees to this preposterously impossible job. And we're off and running.

But the book is not just escapes, fights, and more of the same. The heart of the book is elsewhere.

This is a land that a people conquered. The native population is slowly dying out or interbreeding so their traditional learning is broken, in pieces, but also surviving here and there in altered form.

The heart of the novel is the quest to save the prince, but saving the prince is also saving the people from a great drought. The prince has been caught up in a 100 year old cycle but the understanding of the cycle and what has to be done (and how to do it) exists only in scattered fragments. Collect and piece together the lore, protect the prince from monsters in human shape and those from the unseen world. Save the people. Balsa has her hands full.

There is a lot about knowledge. How it changes, is lost, is found in unlikely places, is ignored, is used for political advantage, etc. I wouldn't expect to see these issues in a YA adventure novel, but it's there, and it drives the story.

I agree wholeheartedly that all ten of Balsa's stories should be translated. The first one in the series had some teeth. The wild adventurist side is coupled with an unusually deep intellectual side. And since this book is rooted in Japanese medievalism, it carries to the western reader a tang of something unknown; a very human society based on interrelationships that are not just standard world building for Fantasy the Western reader would be used to.

Very well done and entertaining from the first page.