Pages & Pressings

NO SPOILERS

M. L. Wang is going 2 for 2 on 6 star reads.

If anyone recommends this book to you it’s because they want you to suffer. That being said, I highly recommend The Sword of Kaigen.

The Sword of Kaigen is a dual-POV epic fantasy standalone that follows the Matsuda family, a noble line of swordsmen with elemental powers set in an East Asian-inspired world called Duna. I always say that this book is like if Naruto and The Poppy War had a baby with the addition of samurai-esque aspects.

This book was devastating- I found myself crying for 300 pages out of the total 611. It’s such a deeply complex novel that if I talked about every single theme, this review would be too long but I’ll try to do it in the simplest way I can to avoid spoilers.

I don’t typically read epic fantasies, but this one was so worth it. The magic system was pretty straightforward: magic-users have elemental magic (and there is also a category of non-magic users) and bloodline techniques that can be inherited. The novel uses book-specific terms that can be confusing to those new to the genre, but thank god for the glossary in the back of the book.

The cast of characters are my favorite type of characters; they are devastatingly complex and realistic. We see them grow and change throughout the novel and all the growing pains that comes with it. They navigate complicated family dynamics in a society of traditional values and gender norms and how to stay true to themselves despite it all.

This book was so incredible that I’m in awe of M. L. Wang and I’ll be reading anything she chooses to put out in the future.