By Tatiana Obey
On the surface, Sistah Samurai is the story of a badass samurai beating the crap out of demons and evil warlords. At its core, it’s about living with the mistakes you’ve made.
When you have sworn two oaths of honour, what do you do when upholding either of them means breaking the other? Will you end your sorry existence, like your inner demons demand, or will you live on as an oath breaker, knowing that you failed all those who trusted you?
The story asks some pretty heavy questions, but there’s more to Sistah Samurai than that.
A Champloo Novella? What’s that? (It’s the book’s subtitle, but what does it mean?)
I watched Samurai Champloo back at uni when it was still relatively new, and I remember I enjoyed it, but barely more than that. I recall I thought the music was cool.
Asking google about it tells me it’s a word used to describe when two (or more) things are mixed up and mashed together. In this context, it would be akin to a remix of two different cultures or genres, or placing characters from one setting into an entirely different setting they’re not normally associated with.
In Sistah Samurai, the main character is a middle-aged black woman and the last survivor of a clan of black female samurai. The story takes places in something that’s either Japan, or a fantasy version of Japan; I’m not familiar enough with the real thing to say whether the various places mentioned are real or not, but I did not recognise any names, and I don’t think it really matters.
What matter is that demons have invaded the world and messed up things real bad for the poor few humans who remain. Make sure you always have protective charms, stay indoors at night, and don’t go into the woods alone – that kind of thing.
Lastly, the story plays out in a time period roughly equivalent to the present day real world. One character sports a CD Walkman, and I got the feeling it’s more of a retro gadget than a piece of cutting edge tech.
In other words, this is not your ordinary samurai story – although, the action scenes do read like they’re from an anime show. In fairness, books trying to emulate a visual medium is something I usually gripe about, but in this case, it works really well.
What I’ll whine about
There are a few sections where the story changes into second person point of view.
I think I get what the author tries to do with it, and the actual shifts are quite smooth when they do come, but it still jolted me out of the story.
What I’ll gush about
As a middle-age white male, it’s probably not a stretch of the imagination to say I might not be the target audience for Sistah Samurai. However, as a self-proclaimed aficionado of excellent, non-cookie cutter, fantasy fiction, this is absolutely right up my alley.
This book just plain oozes attitude, and I love it. The story is confidently and unapologetically its own thing, and it’s got the voice, plot, and quality of writing to back it up.
Finally, there’s a really neat tweak (not quite a plot twist) toward the end that I did not see coming. It’s the kind of thing that slots all the pieces into place in one go, and all the things I’d wondered about suddenly made sense.
Final Words
Sistah Samurai is a book that forges its own path, and it doesn’t give a damn if you read it or not, but you totally should.
