The Harsh Cry of the Heron
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| Author | Lian Hearn |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Series | Tales of the Otori trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Riverhead Books |
| Released | 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 506 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 1594489238 |
The Harsh Cry of the Heron is one of the two sequels to Lian Hearn's popular Tales of the Otori trilogy (the other sequel/prequel being Heaven’s Net is Wide) which was released on March 7, 2006.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
Takeo and Kaede are now quite the prosperous rulers of the Three Countries. They have three daughters, Shigeko, and the twins, Miki and Maya. Shigeko, the eldest daughter and heir, has been trained as a boy would be as she will inherit the domain of Maruyama when she comes of age and the Three Countries upon Takeo's death. Maya and Miki, on the other hand, are seen as cursed not only because of the supersticious beliefs concerning twins but also because of their Tribe talents, indicated by the Kikuta lines on their palms. They are feared and ignored by many, including their mother, but are well-loved by Takeo and Shigeko. Takeo's only fear is that the prophecy concerning his death will be realized - he can only be killed by his son.
Their peaceful lives come to an end when the Kikuta family, now led by Kikuta Akio, who bitterly despises Takeo and controls the family with the strictest adherence to Tribe traditions, make their move against Takeo. Muto Kenji, the Muto Master, attempts to reconcile the Kikuta and Muto families, but to no avail. He takes his life in order to avoid torture, but discovers that his grandson (the son of Takeo and Kenji's daughter Yuki), despite his lack of obvious Tribe talents, is actually a ghostmaster and Yuki's spirit is bound to her son.
With Kenji's death, the Muto, the Kuroda, and the Imai clans begin to waver in their support for the Otori, especially when Muto Shizuka is asked by Takeo to become in the next master instead one of Shizuka's sons, the Muto's spymaster Taku or Arai Zenko. Arai Zenko, Takeo's brother-in-law, ambitiously intends to overthrow Takeo and forms an alliance with the Kikuta as Takeo struggles with other political matters which have arisen, such a claim to challenge the legitimacy of Takeo's rule of the Three Countries and Shigeko's coming-of-ceremony, where she will inherit Maruyama.
As Takeo deals with the issue of Shigeko's right to rule the Three Countries and wages war against Saga Hideki, the envoy of the Emperor who does not recognize Takeo's rule, Takeo's twin daughters and illegitimate son enter the world of ghosts. Maya, whose Tribe talents go beyond the Tribe's ability to control her, takes the spirit of a cat within her and struggles to assert her control over it, becoming increasingly erratic and dangerous. She and Miki are seperated and Maya must train under Taku. Hisao, miserable and haunted by his mother's ghost, is finally able to communicate with her when Maya is captured, but rejects his mother's pleas to spare Takeo's life.
[edit] Characters
Otori Takeo was the protagonist of The Tales of the Otori. He is married to Shirakawa Kaede and the wealthy ruler of the Three Countries. He remains hated by the Kikuta clan. He has three daughters, Shigeko, Maya, and Miki, and one illegitimate son: Kikuta Hisao, conceived by Muto Yuki, a past lover. He perishes at the end of the book after abdicating in favour of Maruyama Shigeko.
Otori Kaede (formerly Shirakawa Kaede) was Takeo's wife. She had a reputation of bringing death to all men that desired her, but Takeo had evaded death for some time. Kaede, despite being a woman, is proficient with weapons and a sword. She loves Shigeko dearly, but she harbors mistrust for her twin daughters. Since she was not able to bear Takeo any sons, she was overjoyed when she later gives birth to a boy. But when the child dies mysteriously, her sister Hana tells her about Takeo's brief liaison with Muto Yuki, the son that was conceived, and the prophecy which foretells Takeo's death can only occur at the hands of his own son. Kaede violently rejects Takeo there after, only to mourn his death with she regains her sanity.
Otori Shigeko (later Maruyama Shigeko) is the eldest daughter of Takeo and Kaede, a wise and reverent young woman. She had been trained as a boy as a child in hopes of her inheiriting the Three Countries as she came of age. She is the heir and lady of the estates of Maruyama. Although she is much her mother's daughter, she loves her father and sisters dearly. Shigeko has always been fascinated by her sisters and always took their side of things. She is an expert archer and is in love with her senior retainer and teacher, Sugita Hiroshi. However, at the end of the novel, she becomes betrothed to Saga Hideki, the Emperor's commander, and inherits control the Three Countries and Takeo's sword, the Jato.
Otori Maya was the daughter of Takeo and Kaede, and the twin of Miki. As a twin, she and her sister have been feared or frowned upon because of superstitious beliefs. She is very mischievous and possesses most, if not all, of Takeo's Tribe abilities. Because her mother fears Maya and Miki being together, one of them were by the Tribe for training always. In revenge of a man heartily welcoming Shigeko and blatantly ignoring the twins, Maya kills his cat with the Kikuta gaze and ends up taking the dead cat's spirit within her. After a great deal of practice, she eventually is able to take on the cat's form, but is continually haunted by cat's spirit threatening to take control of her. She also perishes at the end of the book, when Miki kills her to prevent her being a cat spirit forever.
Otori Miki is the daughter of Takeo and Kaede, and the twin of Maya. She, being the younger of the two, was to be killed after she was born, but Takeo had forbidden it. Although she loves her mother, sisters, and father dearly, her mother is somewhat afraid of her. Miki had always been in the shadow of the more talented Maya, but had been quite comfortable with it. She is less mischievous and daring and more thoughtful and pragmatic than Maya; while she has a fiery temper, her twin is considered the colder and less forgiving twin. When together, they were inseparable. However, at the end of the novel, Miki was forced to kill her sister.
Kikuta Hisao is the son of Takeo and Muto Yuki, and sixteen years old and prophecized to be the one who kills Takeo. He had grown up believing he was the son of Akio, the Kikuta Master. Despite the talents of his mother and father, Hisao possesses no obvious talents like invisibility or the Kikuta hearing and was subjected to harsh training by Akio in hopes of compensating. He is by nature gentle and loves animals, which Akio cruelly punishes him for, and is innately talented at constructing tools, even if it is as complex as a gun. Muto Kenji, his maternal grandfather, discovers only as he dies in Hisao's presence that Hisao is a ghostmaster, a rare talent of the Tribe and that Yuki's spirit remains bound to him as a result. He is not able to hear his mother's pleas until his half-sister Maya aids him in her spirit form. Akio attempts to force him to shoot Takeo with a gun at the end of the novel, but it is Takeo who guides his son's hand with a dagger to kill Takeo and fulfill the prophecy.
Madaren is Takeo (then known as Tomasu)'s younger sister. She is an interpreter and lover to the foreigner. After the Hidden were attacked, Madaren had been sold as a servant in one of the pleasure houses. She had learned to take advantage of them, and stole from them, eventually allowing a merchant to take her to Hofu. Returning to the pleasure houses to gain income, she was eventually bought by Don João, a foreigner. Madaren got him to teach her their language, and she soon became fluent. She tried desperately to get her brother to convert back to the Hidden religion, with no success. She played a part in teaching Kaede the foreigners' language.
Muto Shizuka is Takeo's cousin and the mother of Taku and Zenko, married to Dr. Ishida, Takeo's personal doctor. A skilled member of the Tribe, she is close friends with Kaede and a surrogate mother to Miki and Maya. When Muto Kenji is killed by Akio and the Kikuta clan, Takeo asks that she take on the role of the Master of the Muto clan. While she is respected by the Tribe, the decision is met with dislike from the Muto, Kuroda, and Imai clans, who feel that it is wrong for the new master to be chosen from outside the Tribe and it goes against tradition for a woman to lead, especially since Zenko or Taku would be eligible. When Taku is killed and is betrayed by Zenko, she goes to mourn for Taku and fasts at a temple.
Muto Taku is Shizuka's younger son and spymaster for the Muto, a close friend of Sugita Hiroshi. He is a talented member of the Tribe and well-trusted by Takeo. When Maya's abilities become too uncontrollable, she is entrusted to Taku and his companion (and lover) Sada, who train her to control the cat's spirit and take on its form. His relationship with Zenko is strained and the two do not get along well. Most members of the Tribe feel that Taku should have been the Muto Master instead of Shizuka and his death at the hands of Akio is a heavy loss for Takeo.
Arai Zenko is Shizuka's older son, Taku's older brother, and a retainer of Takeo and husband of Kaede's sister Hana. As an outward gesture of loyalty, Zenko offers his sons Sunaomi and Chikara to be adopted by Takeo, knowing that they would be ineffective collateral against him. He is an ambitious man who still blames Takeo for the death of his father, Arai Daiichi, and conspires to overthrow Takeo by forming an alliance with the Kikuta. He eventually is forced to take his own life at the end of the novel.
Arai Hana (formerly Shirakawa Hana) is Kaede's youngest sister and wife of Arai Zenko, and mother of their three sons: Sunaomi, Chikara, and Hiromasa, who possesses Kikuta lines on his palms. After being rejected by Takeo in her youth, she married Zenko and came to love him and shared his ambition to overthrow Takeo and Kaede. Like her older sister, Hana is unusually beautiful, which resulted in a rivalry between Zenko, Taku, and Hiroshi as to who would marry her in their youth. She reveals to Kaede the secret of Takeo's son and the prophecy concerning Takeo's death in order to create a rift between the two and crush Takeo's spirit. Hana takes her life at the end of the book, along with her youngest son. Her two older sons are saved by Kaede and to be raised at a temple.
Sugita Hiroshi is a loyal retainer of Takeo and Kaede, who has managed Maruyama in trust for Shigeko. He is in love with Shigeko, but does not pursue her hand in marriage because of his loyalty to Takeo and has not married any one else as a result. He and Taku have been close friends since childhood. When Hiroshi is badly injured in the battle against Saga Hideki, Shigeko attempts to kill Saga as revenge.
Kikuta Akio is the Kikuta Master, a cruel man who adheres too severely to the traditions of the Tribe and kills all who try to leave the Tribe. He is driven by fact he had to kill the only woman he ever loved, Muto Yuki, who did not love him in return, and his hatred of Takeo to the point of irrationality and demands all members of the Tribe refer to Takeo as the "Dog". While he has raised Hisao as his own son, Akio treats him harshly and with little kindness, killing even a cat that Hisao befriended brutally as an example. He forms an alliance with Zenko, who claims mastery of the Muto family, in order to kill Takeo.
Muto Yuki (Muto Yusetsu) is the deceased mother of Kikuta Hisao and the daughter of Muto Kenji. When she was forced to kill herself, her spirit was bound to her infant son by his latent abilities as a ghostmaster. Because she loved Takeo, she continually begs Hisao, who tries to ignore her, not to kill his father. Hisao is only able to communicate with his mother with the help of Maya, but ends up rejecting her claims and severs her spirit. Yuki later appears to Maya and Miki as "Yusetsu" and becomes a surrogate mother to them as they try to return to Kaede and warn her of Hana and Zenko's treachery. Miki is wary of Yuki's intentions while Maya readily accepts the ghost woman's help until it is revealed that Yuki was using Maya to take revenge on Kaede. Yuki influences Maya to uses the Kikuta sleep on her infant brother and steals the baby's spirit away, leaving Maya to give into the cat's spirit, devastated by the weight of her actions.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Lian Hearn's Homepage Full information on the new title can be found under News Update.
