The Great Clans of Rokugan

The Collected Novellas Volume One (Legend of the Five Rings Series)

By: Katrina Ostrander, Robert Denton III, Mari Murdock, Daniel Lovat Clark

Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab

Warring samurai clans fight with swords and magic for the Emperor's favor with these collected Legend of the Five Rings novellas, including a brand-new novella of the Crane Clan.

Ice and Snow by Katrina Ostrander-A surprise attack and courtly machinations challenge the untested heir to the Crane Clan to keep the peace and prove her value to her family.

The Sword and the Spirits by Robert Denton III-The champion of the Phoenix Clan must save her lost love from the darkness consuming him, and from the menace of a desecrated shrine.

Whispers of Shadow and Steel by Mari Murdock-In the Scorpion City of Lies, the "only honest Scorpion" magistrate is caught between family and finding justice in a murder case.

Across the Burning Sands by Daniel Lovat Clark-The future heir to the mighty Unicorn Clan faces duplicity, assassins, betrayal, and even sorcery as he seeks peace with the caliph of al-Zawira.

©2021 Fantasy Flight Games (P)2022 Tantor

Decent Reimagining

As an old school fan of Rokugan, I don’t love that Hoturi seems to be phased out, but Hotaru is a decent enough replacement. The stories are entertaining and interesting, the performance is good as always.

Excellent writing, terrible narrator

This is a great collection of stories and gives you a nice idea of where FFG was starting there L5R storyline. Unfortunately the narrator is awful. Just because a word is in another language doesn't mean you need to over emphasize the word. Every non-English word and name the narrator pronounces is painful. Daidoji becomes DIE-DOE-GI! every.single.time.

Please get a new narrator for these books.

A good set of stories and a mostly cohesive "who's who?" for the setting

I'm fairly new getting into Legend of the Five Rings, having been more into sci-fi before learning about this setting. So after reading the description of these stories I went in with the intention of learning about the different factions/families being represented in the story. A goal that this collection did a great job of meeting for the most part.

That is, with the exception of the fourth story. I find the idea of the Unicorn Clan engaging as a general idea but focusing on their affairs outside of Rokugan made them feel fairly detached from the setting as it was presented beforehand. The first three aren't directly connected but it's made clear that the events happening in different places and to different characters have an effect on the setting as a whole. In contrast I frankly don't feel like I have much reason to care about the Unicorn if they're only relevant to Rokugan because the Lion Clan doesn't like them.

It's not bad by any stretch but I believe it would have been better as a separate novel on it's own.

Great Reading!

Very well written short stories, particularly "Ice and Snow" by Katrina Ostrander and "The Sword and the Spirits" by the awesome Robert Denton III.

Great collection of stories!

These short stories are fantastic. Some are better than others, overall I was happy as an old fan.