Descubre la vida de Miyamoto Musashi, el más famoso samurai de la historia de Japón. Una extraordinaria novela de aventuras en la mejor tradición narrativa japonesa. Un clásico imprescindible de las letras niponas.Ya puedes disfrutar del primer volumen de los tres que componen esta obra.

Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa was to me at best mid...while this overall story was good, it was , in my opinion way too long. My gosh the author could have condensed much of the book and still gotten the story across. I will say this, it did give you intimate understandings of the people in the stories due to the extreme detail of the book. One more complaint that I would have is the ending. After getting through all the labors of the book and making it to the ending, one would think/hope that the crescendo of the story would meet expectations of the build up the author makes. Without giving anything away, I was not really that happy with it...a two and a half star review, I would not recommend this to anyone unless they have a driving passion for Japanese history or the martial arts/samurai/swordsmanship. I guess this was just not cup of tea. ( )

I had wanted to read this book for a long time, since I love japanese culture and its history. I finally got around to it after reading the ongoing and awesome "Vagabond" manga from Takehijo Inoue, that's based in this novel (although changing a lot of elements, most of them for the better).

It's hard for me to review this without comparing it to the movies or the manga, but I gave it 5 stars anyway because I think it's a great achievement as a novel. Even though it was published in the 1910s, it reads very well (the english translation must help with the style) and it maintains a good pace throughout the novel, even though Musashi disappears for several chapters and the story follows other secondary characters for a while.

You have to read it not only as the story of one man, but of a period of time and its people. It's a choral novel in that sense, since it features several viewpoints and deals with complex and mature subject matter. But the book wouldn't work without the shadow of Musashi being cast over all the other characters. And what the author does masterfully is show the progression of Musashi, from a violent young man to a master of the way, of zen as much as of the sword. And the rest of the characters meet their karmic ends, as should be in a story.

It is eminently readable and approachable, even for those that are not experts in japanese history, though liking it helps a lot. ( )

Serialization is underrated. Yoshikawa makes it work to his advantage with stories that interleave like both a play and epic. ( )

The story of the making of a samurai in the 17th century. Originally published in Japan as a serial and reminds me of Nikolas Nickelby by Dickens with a touch of Great Expectations. Having been written by and for the Japanese, this book depicts a more realistic culture as opposed to Shogun.
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