Samurai Rising
The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune

When you read enough children’s books published in a single year, folks tend to believe that you’ve an ability to spot trends in the general literature. Trend-spotting is easy enough when you’re dealing with picture books (hot in 2016: Bears rampaging through picnics and blobfish!) but books written......more

My interest to date in samurai has been close to zero, my tolerance for violence and gore minimal (Game of Thrones had me running in the opposite direction), and being a pacifist I usually find books with endless descriptions of battles and war plans tedious. Yet all of this went out the window when......more

Lively and all-too-brief biography of Minamoto Yoshitsune. As a child, I was obsessed with Katherine Paterson's Of Nightingales That Weep, which tells of the Heike conflict from the other side, so I recognized a lot of the names and major events, and was fascinated by Yoshitsune's strange and amazin......more

I made the mistake of reading this book thinking it was fiction, but it is historical nonfiction. Because it takes place in the 12th century there is not much dialogue. Sixty pages of footnotes including the dialogue the author show the difficulty of mixing fact with legend, but Turner handles it we......more

The gripping, epic true story of Minamoto Yoshitsune, the greatest samurai in Japanese history. A rousing, action-packed saga set in 12th century Japan, superbly illustrated by Gareth Hinds, about warriors and bravery, fierce combat, loyalty and treachery, rebellion and revenge. Turner's passion for......more