Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm doing reading these books. This entry, in particular, is racist on a level that was likely shocking in the '70s, with dialogue for Japanese characters transliterated to "Engrish" with all of the Ls changed to Rs. It is appalling.

In fairness to this entry, the whole series appears to be like this, with every book choosing an ethnicity of the week, and then abusing them for a while from a position of profound American ignorance. That's above and beyond the magical Korean who is as much the protagonist as the titular Remo.

And then there is the fact that nothing has a whiff of authenticity; usually in a novel like this the author has spent a lot of time researching and thinking about how people or characters would behave in outlandish scenarios, but there is none of that here. It is, again, completely ignorant of people, women, governments, or anything really. It's impressive in a way.

Also, impressive is that these books somehow compel me to keep reading. Things happen the way I expect them to, and yet I'm still wondering how Remo and Chiun are going to get out of this one. I'm not proud of how many of these I'll have finished reading before I die, and I can rationalize by saying they offer insight into the conservative mind of 1970s-90s (which they very much do), or the the preferred popular fiction of the reading public (which is less clear). And yet, I have a feeling this won't be the last one logged. Heaven help us. ( )