Shogun

Fantastic action thriller, full of historical detail and well-crafted characters. The Dutch pilot Anjin-san is the central focus but the most finely drawn is the warlord Yoshi Toranaga. In a world dominated by competing factions and feudal lords each vying to take martial control of all domains, Toranaga’s mind is full of cunning schemes. He uses Anjin-san to put some of these schemes into action, and a few of outcomes are very dark – betrayal, death, war. But Lord Toranaga takes everything in his stride because to his long-range thinking, the powerful end justifies the means.

9/10