Search - Reluctant Swordsman (Seventh Swordsman, Book 1)

A man inexplicably wakes up in a strange body, in a strange world, where he is a large athletic swordsman and people want to kill him. . . the premise seemed a bit familiar to me. Obvious culture-shock in comparison to his home world, but a boy-shaped demigod gives him all the esoteric knowledge of his craft in a moment--a lost opportunity for the character to have to figure things out for himself, I thought. He's told he's been chosen by the Goddess to do a mission, and the story begins.

I found that the writing was pretty good--descriptive prose and character development--but it took quite a while for any significant action to get going. In this world the People follow rigid hierarchical honor-bound behavior, loosely based on feudal Japan, and it felt a bit stifling. Will Willie/Shonsu shake things up? We can only hope so.

This book was highly recommended to me, and I admit I was disappointed. Not sure yet if I'll continue with this series.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, as I have all of Dave Duncan's books. This is the first of 3, all of which I just posted. He has a really different take on swords and sorcery.

Excellent book. I couldn't put it down!