"Enma: The Immortal" was written by Nakamura Fumi, A Japanese women who's a house wife with children in provincial Japan. She seems to be doing other project recently like drawing and painting. The work that I had the chance to see was really good. I'm not sure how many novels she has done because I just picked this book up by chance.
The novel tells the story of a male assassin who is on the run from his old colleagues. He is all most killed while running away and mets this old man known as the Enma. The Enma is a tattooist who uses cursed powers of the spirits to help with his work. Since the man is pretty much on his dead bed, Enma uses his powers to tattoo the man giving him powers of immortality and also making the man his apprentice.
The novel is set up like a historical timeline that you might find in school history books. The characters live in a time where Japan goes through many changes that none can control. Some of the changes that take place are, Feudal Japan being more modern because of foreign invasion, and, the war between Japan and America that shook the very foundation of Japan. Experiencing the different changes take place section after section was interesting because you got to see how the characters were also affected. Enma can die but it has to be a quick death where the spirits inside him don't have time to regenerate his body. The regeneration process is often described as painful in the novel and he never grows old. You can only feel sorry for him being the reader of this story as Enma is forced to travel from place to place in order to keep his powers hidden. His profession also causes him trouble in itself because Tattoos were frowned upon back in this times and still kind of are in this time. Many people associated Tattoos with someone who is in a gang or sells drugs. I'm not sing people who do have tattoos don't do these things but many tattoo bearing people just do it for self expression. Just like many of Enma's customers. The act of tattooing was illegal in feudal Japan but people came to get them done anyway. These people were braver than we are as a generation because there was nothing to stop the pain, you just had to deal with it.
Enma was a conflicted character who was forced to live as an Immortal Tattoo artist. During his unending life, he meets various people that form relationships with him whether he meant to or not. Soon romance blossoms into his life but due to special circumstances, he can't act on his feeling. His love interest also plays a valuable part in this novel. Switching from his point of view to her's, the reader gets a good insight about what both characters are feeling for each other. The conflict is Enma stays the same age while she grows older. He has the power to change her into an Immortal but looking at the cons more than the pros, its more of a curse than a blessing. Two major villains also make an appearance in the novel. the first one is more like a murder mystery that's about women being brutally murdered while the second case has to do with ...... I guess we can call him family........ . I'm trying not to give spoilers so your going to have to read if you want to know what I mean.
I wasn't excited to read "Enma: The Immortal" in the beginning because I'm not a huge fan of historical based stories but this became a page turner once you get a feel for the characters. The book isn't a long read but the way its formatted makes it feel long. Chapter's are placed in sections so you don't get a page that says "chapter 3" but just the number three underlined in the middle of the page.
No comments:
Post a Comment