Nahoko Uehashi is the author of ten books in the Moribito series, which have sold more than a million copies and won many major literary awards in her native Japan. An associate professor at a Japanese university, she has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and studies indigenous peoples in Australia. She lives near Tokyo, Japan.
Shika no Ou was in general a really great read with a well constructed and believable fantasy setting, but this last entry was filled with way to much explanation and a super abrupt and not very enjoyable ending. I really liked the ideas about how people in the world deal with illness and the idea of why some people get sick/better and others don’t, all of which play out really well in a fantasy setting. The way some of the characters try to use the illness in their favor and the intricate political relationships set up in this novel are really well done. I also liked the importance placed on the connection to nature in most of the characters’ actions. I did however find most of the characters pretty dull and one sided, which made parts of this a slog. And again the ending could have been much better.