Makoto

by Kelley Wilde

Motoko Leigh, a Japanese woman divorced from her American husband and haunted by spirits of her life, is transformed into a warrior primed to battle the dark powers of the supernatural and the demons of the past

Genres: Horror

406 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first things to be said for this book - you have to be willing to take the bad with the good if you want to enjoy it. There are some pretty vulgar and crude things in this book. I guess the author took the idea of makoto to heart and went all the way...with the horror and vulgarity. The writing style is interesting, though, and the story kept me reading. Plenty of gore and creepy moments. The most interesting thing that sets this book apart in a positive way is the introduction to some Japanese words and concepts and the use of the Oni (essentially a demon). The story gets a little choppy near the end, but overall I liked it.

[Kimberley Fligor · Rating 2 out of 5]

What the writer was trying to do was fairly creative, but horribly executed. She was trying to put the reader into the mind/experience of an immigrant who didn't understand English. She tried to do this by overuse of accent-spelling, poor grammar, and slang. Unfortunately, this made the dialogue almost impossible to understand. She also tried this stream-of-consciousness style of narration, again to put the reader inside the main character's mindset, but again this was overused severely, so we spend most of a chapter on the character's trip home through the subway. It felt like the author was eating up pages and pages with words, without moving the plot forward. This, unfortunately, made the plot impossible to follow. When the police scene came and I still couldn't follow along with what was happening because of the above issues, I gave up.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I can say is that this was a really strange book.