Bamboo Horses

by Hugh Cook

A murder mystery with fantasy elements set in the land of Nizon, where people eat with scissors rather than with chopsticks. Fantasy in a modern environment complete with computers and cellphones. Business manager Ken Udamana, a husband and a father of two, believes that someone is planning to murder him and takes a shot at find out who. This novel contains some violence and touches on the subject of an adulterous relationship.

530 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Hugh Cook was a cult author whose works blend fantasy and science fiction. He is best known for his epic series The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Rex Hurst · Rating 2 out of 5]

The central story of Bamboo Horses revolves around protagonist, Ken Udamma, trying to sell his ancestral land to an international business consortium. The family business, animating bamboo horses, is about to go bankrupt and the majority of his extended family are scroungers. This then introduced several suspicious deaths, attempted fraud, an-oddly underplayed supernatural element, and, finally, a violent ending
It’s difficult to describe the genre as it seems to be a modern day world (at least by 2005 standards) with some mystical elements tossed in. It is a fictional world and in a fictional country, but the differences seems to be in name only. The world is developed backwards in the novel. The differences are mostly related slowly at the end, rather than up front where we can get a sense of it. And the fact of it is there are many little details which crop up about the world with explanation. Each character has an inner and outer name (which sometimes is confusing) and they eat with scissors. But these interesting details are few and far between.