Shibumi in Espionage Aficionados

Jun 11, 2015 Steve Goble rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mysteries-and-espionage

This is a very enjoyable read, a potent blend of espionage thriller and philosophical musings. Trevanian does so many things right, and yet the flaws are serious and kept me from giving this book the four stars I thought it was headed toward at the halfway point.

The good: I loved the depth of character Trevanian achieved for his protagonist, Nicholai Hel. I loved the sense of cultures colliding, East versus West, old versus new. I loved the spelunking adventures -- I have done just enough caving This is a very enjoyable read, a potent blend of espionage thriller and philosophical musings. Trevanian does so many things right, and yet the flaws are serious and kept me from giving this book the four stars I thought it was headed toward at the halfway point.

The good: I loved the depth of character Trevanian achieved for his protagonist, Nicholai Hel. I loved the sense of cultures colliding, East versus West, old versus new. I loved the spelunking adventures -- I have done just enough caving myself to feel Trevanian really brought this aspect of his novel home, and I felt his action sequences in the cave were far superior to the other action sequences in his book. I found the prose to be competent, sometimes wonderful, and the secondary characters of Kishigawa, Hana and Le Cagot were very well drawn. I loved the metaphor of the game of Go for life, and the sense of duty Nicholai felt toward his mentor.

The bad: Nicholai's foes, in contrast with his friends, were portrayed as mere charicatures, bumbling nabobs. Nicholai himself, while predicting the possible actions of his foes, nonetheless fails to act on them and thus causes many of his own problems -- without ever seeming to realize it. Nicholas possesses a "proximity sense" that sometimes borders on magic; it might as well be called "spider sense" or "the force." Some big loose ends never seem to be noticed by any of the people involved. The antagonists' reasons for going after Nicholai in the first place are stupid,and Nicholai misses a key opportunity to prevent his later problems. Trevanian employs a disturbing amount of deus ex mechina in resolving his plot. And Nicholai's spoiling of the antagonists' plans is, frankly, way too damned easy.

Despite all those problems, I found myself turning pages eagerly. Go figure.

On balance, this is a really fun read, but one that ultimately fails to live up to the promise of the first half of the book. I liked it better than anything I have read thus far from Robert Ludlum, but "Shibumi" is not on a par with espionage novels by John Le Carre or Graham Greene. Still, I will seek out Trevanian's other novels. ...more

1 like · Like · see review