The Sword of Kaigen: A Theonite War Story

By: M. L. Wang

Narrated by: Andrew Tell

On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name "The Sword of Kaigen".

Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, f14-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: To master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen's alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.

Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.

When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?

©2019 Miracle Wang (P)2020 Miracle Wang

Critic reviews

"The Poppy War's darkness meets The Last Airbender's Elemental Magic...I haven't been so emotionally moved by a book in a long while." (JC Kang, USA Today best-selling author of The Dragon Songs Saga)

Performance okay, except for the japanese

Story is great, narrator does a good job with characters and tone, but clearly wasn't given much help with the non-english words. Jarring at times if you're familiar with the pronunciation.

Messy, but Heartfelt

This story is a bit confused on what it wants to be and who it wants for reader/listener.
The viewpoint characters' narratives run at different speeds, sometimes creating abrupt tonal changes or breaks in the narrative. The genre is fuzzy as well. Clear cultural inspiration is derived from WWII Japan, but it seems determined to be historical fiction, epic fantasy, and pure drama all at the same time.
Aside from that, the story structure is strange. It feels like more 2-3 seasons of a TV drama than one self-contained story. Even into the final chapter, this book continues to present the reader with new world elements and foreign and/or original terms. Even as someone familiar with Japanese and language theory, I found the manner and frequency of foreign/fictional terms to be the least reader-friendly part of this book.
If none of those are deal-breakers for you, you should enjoy the deep heart of this story. There IS a conclusion and it IS worth waiting for. I will hope to see this author grow in skill and focus in later works.

Great story, awkward performance

I thought the story was great, but would have benefitted greatly from a woman narrator and better Japanese pronunciation. The book has more dialogue from female characters, and the narrator was not good at expressing their emotions. It felt sarcastic at times.

Interesting and different

Good story, GREAT character arcs. I don’t know how I missed who the story would actually be about, but seeing how their relationships with those around them evolved over time was fun.

Good action, good dialogue and evoked emotion which I don’t get from a lot of books.

The only thing I couldn’t get used to was some of the terminology used like how they change the names of time(seconds minutes hours etc). I never got any tie in or relation for it so it left me wondering.

Also, I know this is a stand alone for a larger series, but it feels like a cliff hanger to get you to buy into the rest of her work (though the book itself wraps up neatly). Smart, and I get it, but big reveals in the last chapter or two of a stand-alone without explanation just left me wanting another three or four chapters.

loved it, wish there was a sequel.

Loved it, would definitely recommend. Would be great if there was a second book about the orphan girl.