Wind of Honor

Legend of the Five Rings: The Four Winds Saga #1st scroll

by Ree Soesbee

The Emperor is Dead.
The Steel Throne, seat of imperial power in Rokugan, sits empty. Ambition wars with justice and deception with truth as the emperor's heirs seek to gain the favor of the Clans. The fate of the Empire walks the edge of a blade, and before all is lost, the Lady of hte Sword must step forward to restore honor to a land in need.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, High Fantasy, Role Playing Games

277 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

Ree Soesbee is a writer, game designer, and lore editor for massively multiplayer online games as well as traditional pen and paper RPGs. She has authored more than sixteen novels in a wide variety of fantastic worlds ranging from the popular Legend of the Five Rings setting to Star Trek, Dragonlance, Deadlands, and Vampire: the Masquerade. Her body of work includes over a hundred RPG texts, and inclusion in numerous short story anthologies and professional literary journals. Currently, she is a lead designer and lore writer for Guild Wars 2; innovative follow-up to the award-winning Guild Wars MMORPG. Already, Guild Wars 2 has recieved Gamescom's 'Best Online Game' and MMORPG.com's 'Most Anticipated MMO' awards.

Reviews

[Ced · Rating 4 out of 5]

great! honor rules all!

[Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ree Soesbee writes in a typical and gripping narrative style which captures the 'need for acceptance' feeling of a child to their parental figure in the life of the main character and the eldest of the family. It's a good book, but not necessarily unpredictable. In comparison to her last book of the same series, Wind of Truth, it pales in comparison due to the straight forward character of the story.

[Annchan Maulana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sacrifice for an honor ... this day it is so hard to get

the story is complicated for me to make understandable review ^_^"

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The “first scroll” in this series, which directly follows the prologue entry in this time period of Rokugan. While far superior to The Steel Throne book, this lacked depth of character for me. I liked that we centered mostly on Emperor Toturi’s daughter, Tsudao, a samurai in her own right. Her struggle to maintain the honor and discipline between the clans as tensions mount between Dragon, Phoenix, and Lion was presented in an interesting way, but I didn’t care much for the very generic, cackling villain. A little too on the nose. I’m still interested to see what more will happen in the series, but I find myself wishing it was more of a straightforward plot of scheming clans, without the magic and creatures. Obviously that’s not the point of these books, but I’m invested enough in the mundane aspects of the world for whatever reason.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much better than The Steel Throne, thank god. an engaging story, well-told, although with a few weird or just laughable turns of phrase (“The edges of the crater stood hundreds of miles apart—big enough to house an entire city.” — really? hundreds of miles across is the size of a city? hmmmm). again there are timeline inconsistencies, but since the inconsistencies are relative to The Steel Throne, which was bad, I don’t really care. I hope the rest of the Four Winds Saga will hold to this higher standard.

[Chris Yee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been a fan of Soesbee for her GW work, so was thrilled to read this when I picked it up. Well written with cool fight scenes and political intrigue. The mention of 'zombie' kinda pulled me out of the immersion though. Sorry!

If I find the rest of them I'll be sure to carry on with the series though.