The Dragon King's Palace

Sano Ichiro #8

by Laura Joh Rowland

It is June 1694, and Reiko, the wife of Sano Ichiro; Reiko's friend, Midori; the shogun's mother; and Lady Yanagisawa, the wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command, are kidnapped and imprisoned in the tower of a ruined palace. The shogun demands quick action so Sano is forced to work with his sworn enemies.

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Japan, Fiction, Historical Mystery, Historical, Crime

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Granddaughter of Chinese and Korean immigrants, Laura Joh Rowland grew up in Michigan and where she graduated with a B.S. in microbiology and a Master of Public Health at the University of Michigan. She currently lives in New Orleans with her husband. She has worked as a chemist, microbiologist, sanitary inspector and quality engineer.

Reviews

[Tocotin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry, not good. Nothing exciting happened. Everyone, and I mean every. single. person is just too stupid to live, not to say anachronistic. There was no single detail that made me forget the cardboard. The last scene which had the shogun and his entire court at the naming ceremony of a baby girl of a mere police officer... oh hush hush. I love this series in all its badness, so I'll buy whatever comes out... but seriously, it burns. (Also I detest crazy cults like Black Lotus. Easy-peasy plot device.) Also, not much m/m *sad panda*
It was my first book in 2013. I've got a bad feeling about this.

[Gintautas Ivanickas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jau aštuntoji istorinių detektyvų, kurių veiksmas rutuliojasi XVII a. Japonijoje, knyga. Ir šįsyk, turiu pripažinti, nuvylė. Nuvylė, nes detektyvo, kaip tokio – nelabai. Veikiau jau tiesiog nuotykinė knyga. Visas tyrimas vyksta maždaug taip. „Tai galėtų būti A.“ Tada vykstama pas A. „Prisipažink, kad tai tu!“ – spaudžia tyrėjas. „Ne, dievas mato, ne aš!“ – atsako įtariamasis. „Prisipažink!“ – „Ne!“ – „Prisipažink, nes tuoj kai duosiu skaudžiai!“ – „Ne aš, ne aš!“ – „Hmmm, o gal tai tada B?“ O tuomet skubama pas B, po to pas C ir pas D. Ir viskas kartojasi. Galop autorė mūsų pasigaili ir išspaudžia kokius penkiolika puslapių kažko, jau panašaus į tyrimą.
Bet tai čia žanro klausimai.
Knygos intriga užsimezga, kai siogūno motušė staiga užsidega noriu paturistaut – nuvykti pasigrožėti Fudzi vaizdais. Na, ir turistautų sau, tai ne. Vienai nuobodu, tad skubiai surenka kompaniją kilmingų damų. Dzin, kad viena tuoj tuoj gimdys, kita lengvai pamišus, trečia (kaip ir kitos dvi) niekur keliaut nenori. Motušė maloniai pakviečia: „A nu, greitai susikraunat lagaminus neinkštusios, ir – varom!“
Ir – varo.
Pakeliui kažkas užpuola kortežą, visus, išskyrus tas keturias damas išskerdžia, o jas paima įkaitais. Ir pareikalauja, kad siogūnas mirtimi nubaustų vieną valdininką. Tad dabar Sano tenka skubiai aiškintis, kas galėtų būti tas paslaptingas pagrobėjas ir kur laikomos įkaitės. Juolab ir interesų konfliktas yra – viena iš pagrobtųjų – Sano žmona, Reiko.
Kaip nuotykinis – pusė velnio. Kaip detektyvas – skystas. Todėl tik trys iš penkių. Bet serija visumoj man patinka, tai prie jos dar sugrįšiu.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid entry in the Sano Ichiro series. It doesn't dissappoint, but neither does it exceed expectations. The characters and setting are fantastic, but the plotting and prose often leave something to be desired. Still, if you have any sort of interest in Japanese culture, any book in this series is well worth reading.

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy this series. Rowland has a gift for describing the scenes she creates, especially what the sky is doing, how cold it is, the colors and so on...just lovely!

I liked this title especially because it focused more on women during the Tokugawa regime. I'm looking forward to the next volume!

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is pretty amazing that so many people have managed to survive eight books at this point. The number is stupid choices made by all parties involved should have killed all of them 100 times over.

Surely there has to be better historical fiction set in Japan out there.

[Margaret Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

time of the shoguns, not enough history or accuracy, but a nice quick read

[Kandice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up based solely on the blurb on the cover: "Think James Clavell meets Raymond Chandler." It turned out to be accurate, but also made my expectations too high for what this book turned out to be. I absolutely adore Clavell, and Joh Rowland goes so far as to use many, many of the same character names he uses in Shogun. As soon as those loved and familiar names showed up I expected the depth and breadth of Shogun. Alas, this was more along the lines of a Christie or Stanley Gardner which I normally love, but because of those unrealistic hopes...it fell short.

One more complaint, while it seems that's all I'm doing, is that this turned out to be #8 in a series, and yet NOWHERE is this stated on or in the book until the excerpt for the #9 appears at the end. Being a lover of series, those little previews for the next in line are thrilling for me, but NOT when I had no idea it WAS a series! I think it's a little unfair of publishers to trick us unsuspecting readers like that.

Now to the book itself. It was a nice, easy mystery. It really did play out like any number of them. Poirot, Miss Marple, Perry Mason, Eve Dallas and Roarke, Alex Cross, you get the picture, but here we have Sano Ichiro, a "detective" for the Shogun, and his wife Reiko. There are any number of side characters that are obviously recurring. You get clues, insights, revealed secrets, political intrigue, a bit of fighting and, as always, a damsel (or four) in distress. Had I been expecting that formula I would probably have been more apt to rate the book higher. I could tell there is a lot of backstory I missed in the first seven installments, but it was still readable. Enough was back filled so that I wasn't lost. Reading so far ahead has actually made me a little more anxious to go back and find those first seven. Oh! And then #9. But when I do, I will know what to expect, and so will probably enjoy it quite a bit more.

[Pamela Oland · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I don’t know what I want to read, I turn to Laura Joh Rowland’s creation, Sano Ichiro. Her long series of novels set in medieval Japan about the detective to the shogun, are absorbing, fascinating, and whisk me off to another time and place. They are such fun to read. And you really need to start at the first one, which I believe was ”Bushido”. That way you can follow Sano on his journey through the machinations of the bakufu, the warrior class, attempting to win the favor of the shogun, which will amuse and horrify you! The stories are absorbing, well plotted, with a returning cast of characters you will love and love to hate. it is a very fascinating bird‘s eye view of that mysterious time and place.

[Lollyletsgo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I liked the story, but I expected more, I'm not sure yet what, but I just wanted more. When Reiko has to confide and then is betrayed I don't know.. I feel like she should never have gotten close to Yanagisaw's crazy wife. She knew she was nutso in the beginning. And Hirata not sending word (one of the men back to Sano)? That was really out of character for him... Though it might set up future doubts between him and Sano.. I still am iffy about the way Reiko was going to sacrafice herself for everyone and taking advice from the Yanagisaw's loony wife was a bit of a jumping the shark for me.

[Clifford Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the books in this series until this one. Some were definitely better the others but this one was so bad that it seemed like it was written by someone else. Besides the plot being rather weak, all the well crafted characters that I had grown to appreciate in the earlier books had changed and began acting like stupid, irrational morons, instead of the usual clever, insightful characters that I remember. It makes me hesitate to read the next one and experience further disappointment.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a terribly written book, full of awkward moments and bizarre characters. It's supposed to be a mystery story, but the main characters are so incompetent that do not solve the mystery but blunder right into the resolution thanks to good fortune. There is a lot of (nonsensical) dialogue between the characters which suggests the story would have functioned better as a play rather than a novel.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I had a hard time reading about a kidnapping, because that is one of my base fears, but when I read this, I really appreciated the motives, the research, the investigation, etc. All very detailed, heroic (like all the Sano Ichiro books) and full of political intrigue. I loved this book. On to the next one!

[Lindsay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't too impressed with this book. Some of the details seemed very random, the characters were pretty shallow and the baddie too insane to really identify with.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need to read this again, was a long time since I last read it but I enjoyed it.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

The eighth installment of Rowland's Sano Ichiro series starts off by separating Reiko and Sano. The former is captured by a madman who thinks kidnapping the shogun's mother is a great idea to get what he wants. The detective couple must work separately, after having been a team for the previous four books, to escape their current predicament. If it sounds a bit ridiculous, that's because it is. The previous novels in the series all focused on some part of Edo period life. This one, on the other hand, feels like an episode straight out of an anime, right down to the "heroine looks like my dead lover" trope.

The only time this novel shined was when Sano was investigating the mystery of the "Dragon King" on his own. The traipsing all over Edo's various districts, the teamwork with Yanagisawa (I know; I'm just as surprised as you), and the flashes of insight were the most intriguing scenes in the novel. Unfortunately, these didn't occur until the final third of the novel, meaning it was a bit of a slog to get there.

Most of the novel from Sano's perspective is bickering between him and Hoshina, the latter constantly openly challenging him, which always sounds ridiculous and unprofessional, but it is what it is. Then there's the shogun having tantrums every other page. The guy sounds more infantile each book. and whenever Yanagisawa is cooperating, of course one of the other chancellors must become the villain, so Makino now has to make sly remarks undermining Sano. Not to mention both Sano and Yanagisawa almost lose their heads more than once because of a priest. Seriously, you would think everyone would want to help Sano find the Dragon King rather than derail him, but what do I know?

For Reiko's part, she spends the novel trapped in a room that she tries to escape every other chapter with spoiled Keisha-in, hysterical Midori, and delusional Lady Yanagisawa (she still doesn't have a given name). Her chapter reveal what the Dragon King's real plan is Like all Sano novels, nonconsensual and out-there sex and sexual violence are involved, thanks to the main antagonist being sexually abused by his mother, therefore causing all of the events leading up to the novel and thereafter Her chapter attempted to raise the stakes emotionally Midori is 9 months pregnant and ready to pop and Lady Yanagisawa is schizophrenic where she might murder Reiko at any time, but they honestly didn't do much for me personally, nor do I feel like the events really developed her character, though I will say her moments with Sano at the end were extremely sweet.

Overall, this book was both typical Rowland but also an anomaly. No one's character really developed in this book, and the mystery was some twisted revenge completely blown out of proportion. Not once did I find the situation believable, and that made it tough reading.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really hesitated to give this book five stars because it's not that well written. The author over-explains things, and many of the characters come across as shallow and predictable. That said, the combination of historical fiction, detective novel, and court intrigue was just too unique and fun for me to not want to keep a copy on my shelf.

Let's get the negatives out of the way. The writing is clunky and the author spends more time telling you what characters are feeling than showing you what they're feeling. Also, she seems to be working out some weird sexual guilts of her own? She chooses to set the book in a period when bisexuality & extramarital relationships were common, but then basically just equates wickedness in her characters with how much sex they have outside of marriage. The only characters who are always noble and good are the heterosexual, monogamous Mary Sues. If you're so uncomfortable with extramarital sexuality, why set your story in a time and place when it was common? Or for that matter, why not just ignore the parts of the historical context that you're not comfortable with, like so many other straight writers do? But she chooses to bring up extramarital homosexual affairs often, and to only assign them to wicked characters. That's troubling.

The sole exception to this rule is the Big Bad, who is entirely hetero, but who has bizarre sexual hangups that I can't describe without spoiling. These hangups are pretty irrelevant to the story and didn't really need to be there. I felt like she only included them to make the villain more creepy in his advances on our virtuous heroine. Why do that? Unless some part of you is getting off on it, maybe?

But in the end, I liked the book. The big positive is the intriguing and unique setting. I'd never even thought of having a detective story set in Edo Period Japan. And having the detective in question working directly for the ruling shogun throws in elements of political court intrigue as well. The author does a great job of setting the historical stage, and of explaining terms and concepts that might be foreign to an English reader. So, if you love historical fiction & court intrigue this will be a fun read for you.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a follow up to the previous book in this series, I read The Dragon King’s Palace, the eighth book in the Sano Ichiro series. In this book, Sano is once given a serious and dangerous task. He had just uncovered the conspiracy to kill the successor to the Shogun when four high born women disappear. The mother of the shogun, suffering in the summer heat, decided to take a journey to the slopes of Mt. Fuji, in order to find cooler temperatures. The mother of the shogun does not travel simply. She decides to take three companions, a convoy of carts carrying clothing and necessities and a protective guard of over one hundred men. Her companions are Lady Yanagisawa, the wife of Sano’s rival; Reiko, the wife of Sano; and Midori, who is due to give birth very soon to her first child.
Somehow the entire entourage has disappeared on the road to Mt. Fuji. It seems impossible because
there are guard posts along the way, where travelers are stopped and checked. Of course, the shogun does not want anyone to know of the disappearance of the women, but very soon it is learned that in a narrow defile, there are dozens of bodies soldiers terribly murdered and carts of finery overturned but not robbed. Where could the ladies be? And who could have the means to employ a strike force to murder the shogun’s army? Once again, Sano has a serious problem to solve.
This book very derivative of previous books in the series and many of the characters repeat from earlier books, speaking the same words and behaving the same way as in the previous books. This world is too insular and predictable.

[Pat MacEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is number 8 in the Sano Ichiro series by Laura Joh Rowland, which combines historical adventure and romance with mystery and murder during the Tokugawa Shogunate at the end of the 17th century. In this entry, it is June 1694, and the Shogun's capital city of Edo is still reeling from an attempt by the Black Lotus Cult to stage an uprising against the Tokugawa. The Shogun's mother, however, is bored. She decides to take a vacation and visit Mt. Fuji, though women are not allowed to actually climb the sacred mountain. She bullies Reiko (Sano Ichiro's wife and parter; Reiko's very pregnant friend, Midori; and Lady Yanagisawa, the wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command into joining her procession. The outing appears to be well-guarded and supplied, with palanquins for the noble ladies and maids galore to serve them. On an isolated stretch of the royal Tokaido highway, however, they are ambushed by a large party of ronin. More than a hundred members of the procession are massacred. The Shogun's mother and her companions are kidnapped and imprisoned in the tower of a ruined palace on a forgotten island. Who would dare? The Dragon King, formerly a figure of myth. But who is he? And what does he want with these women? A complicated plot leaves Sano Ichiro caught between several factions at court as well as remnants of the Black Lotus cult he has done his level best to destroy. Recommended for its vivid period detail and a puzzle worthy of myth in its own right.

[Kkraemer · Rating 3 out of 5]

When the mother of the shogun decides on a holiday, it is not acceptable to just say no. None of the three women she included wanted to go. She was an imperious woman, bossy to the extreme, and the three women were not close to each other. One was almost at the end of her first pregnancy.

But they went. One the way, their procession was attacked, though. All of the porters, servants, and companions (save one) were killed, and the women disappeared. Kidnapped.

So begins an intricate and exciting mystery. Back in the court, rival factions are vying for power, so finding the shogun's mother would be a most powerful action to propel them into power, and the shogun, not known for his intellect, alternately cajoles, threatens, and praises the various factions in their efforts. Much intrigue.

This is a fascinating mystery and, like all historical fiction, it provides a sense of 17th Century Japan along the way: how people lived, plotted, traveled, and mourned are part of the background...but it's much more than a guise for an armchair tour. The characters are complex, the situations are complicated, and the intricate plotting makes this book, like all of Rowland's, an excellent way to spend a few hours.

[P.L. Hayes · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok. Not great, just ok. I found some of the character flaws a little tedious (how many times will you put up with a person who will do nothing to help themselves?), and some of the "I can feel my soul-mate when they are near" was a bit over the top. These, nominally, are not supernatural stories, but historical ones...

Anyway, the story itself hangs together pretty well. The villain is a bit out there, but within the bounds of story telling. The plot is reasonable, given the villains' predilections. The characterizations are still what Mx. Rowland has done in other books, no major deviations. It was interesting to see some character development for the frenemies, as well as some well deserved come-uppance.

[Kate Morton · Rating 1 out of 5]

The plot and setting were very interesting, but the execution left a lot to be desired. It could be because this is the 8th book in the series and the first one I have read, but the characters seemed incredibly one dimensional and I didn't really care what happened to them. It didn't deliver on what I expect from a detective novel. When I read a detective story, the fun part is putting all of the pieces together. Throughout this book the author spells out every single new development right down to the motivations and thoughts of the characters. At first I thought it was a clever way to create some red herrings, but as the book went on I realized that it's just the author explaining to the reader how each piece fits. A fast read, but I felt entirely disconnected from the story.

[Steve Lamothe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my ultimate comfort food !! A good mystery , a great commanding main character! Samurais , political Intrigue, side characters that you actually care for and remember ! I’ve been with this series for what seems like a good 15 years ( I found the first book of the series in a second hand bookshop ) and have never looked back !

The one thing I will commend is that Laura joh Rowland can really describe a scene in such minute details that it makes you feel and visualize the scene like you are there, something I seldom can do ! To me this is great writing for me!!

On to the next !

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is certainly a lot of info about 17th c Japan here (I'm not an expert to evaluate it). There is a mystery, a violent kidnapping, which various high officials compete to solve. There is action, as both the victims snd the authorities fight various opponents. Maybe it's because I had not read any earlier books in the series, but I couldn't get invested in the characters, and the endless and complex political factions and their scheming wore me down.

[Becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This gross violence against women kidnapping plot takes place in a cool setting, with Tokugawa detectives and power hungry samurai, incompetent shogun, and lots of political intrigue. But I am exhausted by sexual violence or sociopathy being the only action plot options for female characters, and conniving sneakiness for gay characters. For a better historic court drama/mystery read Slueth of the Ming Dynasty aka 14th year of Chenghua.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really good title in this series.
Four women who are very important to Sano and the Shogun are kidnapped and held captive for a strange ransom. Three different factions head to their rescue. But the kidnapped women have ideas of their own, as they try to rescue themselves from 'The Dragon King's' palace.

[Lora Angelova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ако искате да се потопите в ежедневието на древна Япония и обичате криминални романи поредицата ,"Японски загадки" е точно за вас. Авторката пише много увлекателно, книгата е изпълнена с обрати и много цветни персонажи.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was semi-interesting at some points, but then got boring in others. It was ok.

[jaroiva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tento díl mě tak nebavil jako některé jiné ze série. Ale nebyl ani nejhorší. Takový střed.

[Paschalis]

elibrary

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I need to go back and read the first book in the series... I could not connect with the characters.