What do you think?
Rate this book
Samurai Girl #3
The Book of the Pearl
When I was six months old, I dropped from the sky - the lone survivor of a deadly Japanese plane crash. The newspapers called me Heaven. I was adopted by a wealthy family in Tokyo, pampered, and protected. For19 years, I thought I was lucky.
Paperback
First published September 1, 2003
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 18, 2017
My patience for Heaven has expired.
Indefinitely. Gosh, this is probably the worst book in the series so far.
I just hated it so much.
Okay, at the beginning Heaven and Cheryl are partying in a club, Heaven gets a job as a shot girl, and they get almost get mugged by noobs. NO FUCKS WERE GIVEN.
Nothing really happens from there, unless you count Heaven's jealousy over Hiro's girlfriend, Karen. We get it already! Stop whining!!
"BUT IT ISN'T FAIR THAT HIRO IS WITH KAREN!! HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE WITH ME!! I'M HIS ONE TRUE LOVE!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!"
Please do.
And then Karen's character changed dramatically. Yes, I know she was kidnapped by accident in the last book, but at the beginning of this book, she was only slightly nervous and scared. Right in the middle, she becomes a needy, dependent, desperate woman. It's so sad to see a character changed without explanation so the reader can root for the annoying main character. Unfortunately, it worked. I was sick and tired of Karen's immature behavior.
"WHY DOES HIRO SPEND TIME WITH HEAVEN! THAT BITCH GOT ME KIDNAPPED!! HIRO BELONGS TO ME NOT HEAVEN, SO I WILL TELL HEAVEN LIES THAT I'M MOVING IN WITH HIM! IT ISN'T FAIR!! NOTHING IS FAIR! THEY GET TO TALK TO EACH OTHER, AND THAT MAKES ME SO ANGRY THAT HE DOESN'T PAY ATTENTION TO ME!! I HATE HER!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!
I used the same .gif twice. Got a problem with that?
There's also some drama with Cheryl dating this obviously evil guy named Marcus. Marcus is a thug. Cheryl doesn't care and gets into a fight with Heaven because, you know, "Butt off! It's not your business, Heaven!"
UGH.
In case you didn't get it, I hate Heaven. She's an irritating, whiny, self-centered, doormat, Mary Sue. EVERY man finds Heaven attractive. Even Marcus finds her attractive. Really. She's also considered "vivacious" by her mother. Ugh. And if I have to hear "Your name is Heaven? Well, you're heavenly" one more time I swear I'm going to burst into a non-ending anger!
Did I mention she was self-centered? Well, check this out. When a guy in the club saw something that surprised him, he exclaimed "Christ". Heaven has the guts to say, "No, my name is Heaven."
UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!!
She also doesn't care about the consequences. She gets drunk and almost has sex with a stranger. At least I thought they were going to. She has no sense of responsibility. Hiro tries to reason with her, but whines and she complaints like a two-year-old because "IT IS SO UNFAIR!" And she has no backbone! I wasn't expecting a heroine who has clever comebacks, but Heaven lets EVERYONE insult her because "she has nothing else to do".
My head hurts.
Everything was turning "swimmingly" until Marcus turned out to be a bad guy. I'm so surprised. Marcus kidnaps Cheryl to God-knows-where and lures Heaven into a trap. The action was pretty decent until Heaven was saved by a deus ex machina. The whole conflict is resolved in 15 pages, right before the last chapter. Yawn.
Okay, here's a note for (future) authors. Just because a protagonist happens to know how to fight with weapons, doesn't automatically make them a badass. It takes more complexity to make a badass character. Take a look at Clary from the Mortal Instruments. She "happens" to know how to fight with weapons, but her Mary Sueness doesn't make her believable. It's the same case here.
Heaven will always be a bland heroine in my eyes.
AND THAT FUCKING CLIFFHANGER!! I hate when bad books have cliffhangers; they make me way too eager to get this over it than everything else.
Goddammit.
Just three more books to go!
Indefinitely. Gosh, this is probably the worst book in the series so far.
I just hated it so much.
Okay, at the beginning Heaven and Cheryl are partying in a club, Heaven gets a job as a shot girl, and they get almost get mugged by noobs. NO FUCKS WERE GIVEN.
Nothing really happens from there, unless you count Heaven's jealousy over Hiro's girlfriend, Karen. We get it already! Stop whining!!
"BUT IT ISN'T FAIR THAT HIRO IS WITH KAREN!! HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE WITH ME!! I'M HIS ONE TRUE LOVE!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!"
Please do.
And then Karen's character changed dramatically. Yes, I know she was kidnapped by accident in the last book, but at the beginning of this book, she was only slightly nervous and scared. Right in the middle, she becomes a needy, dependent, desperate woman. It's so sad to see a character changed without explanation so the reader can root for the annoying main character. Unfortunately, it worked. I was sick and tired of Karen's immature behavior.
"WHY DOES HIRO SPEND TIME WITH HEAVEN! THAT BITCH GOT ME KIDNAPPED!! HIRO BELONGS TO ME NOT HEAVEN, SO I WILL TELL HEAVEN LIES THAT I'M MOVING IN WITH HIM! IT ISN'T FAIR!! NOTHING IS FAIR! THEY GET TO TALK TO EACH OTHER, AND THAT MAKES ME SO ANGRY THAT HE DOESN'T PAY ATTENTION TO ME!! I HATE HER!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!
I used the same .gif twice. Got a problem with that?
There's also some drama with Cheryl dating this obviously evil guy named Marcus. Marcus is a thug. Cheryl doesn't care and gets into a fight with Heaven because, you know, "Butt off! It's not your business, Heaven!"
UGH.
In case you didn't get it, I hate Heaven. She's an irritating, whiny, self-centered, doormat, Mary Sue. EVERY man finds Heaven attractive. Even Marcus finds her attractive. Really. She's also considered "vivacious" by her mother. Ugh. And if I have to hear "Your name is Heaven? Well, you're heavenly" one more time I swear I'm going to burst into a non-ending anger!
Did I mention she was self-centered? Well, check this out. When a guy in the club saw something that surprised him, he exclaimed "Christ". Heaven has the guts to say, "No, my name is Heaven."
UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!!
She also doesn't care about the consequences. She gets drunk and almost has sex with a stranger. At least I thought they were going to. She has no sense of responsibility. Hiro tries to reason with her, but whines and she complaints like a two-year-old because "IT IS SO UNFAIR!" And she has no backbone! I wasn't expecting a heroine who has clever comebacks, but Heaven lets EVERYONE insult her because "she has nothing else to do".
My head hurts.
Everything was turning "swimmingly" until Marcus turned out to be a bad guy. I'm so surprised. Marcus kidnaps Cheryl to God-knows-where and lures Heaven into a trap. The action was pretty decent until Heaven was saved by a deus ex machina. The whole conflict is resolved in 15 pages, right before the last chapter. Yawn.
Okay, here's a note for (future) authors. Just because a protagonist happens to know how to fight with weapons, doesn't automatically make them a badass. It takes more complexity to make a badass character. Take a look at Clary from the Mortal Instruments. She "happens" to know how to fight with weapons, but her Mary Sueness doesn't make her believable. It's the same case here.
Heaven will always be a bland heroine in my eyes.
AND THAT FUCKING CLIFFHANGER!! I hate when bad books have cliffhangers; they make me way too eager to get this over it than everything else.
Goddammit.
Just three more books to go!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 11, 2007
Samurai Girl is pretty fun and possibly – very possibly – mentally stimulating for a young Asian American woman of about 13-17 years old. but I found it annoying that all the women of color were bitchy towards the protagonist and that all the blond women were nice to her and that all the women were subordinate to – and fighting to be on the good side of – powerful men. also really annoyingly hetero-normative.
February 24, 2022
Awful. Love it. Still going
February 8, 2023
I loved the thrilling experience or adventures she went through. Loved it. Honestly, I was at the edge of my seat while reading this book back then. I knew what cocktails now though.
April 17, 2009
As like each edition before this one, I raced through this book pretty quickly. Maybe it's just me, but the plot seems to be seriously waning. Although Heaven's ex-fience and her sort-of "nemisis" Teddy admitted in Book 2 that he actually felt "in love" with Heaven and helped her foil his own father's mistaken kidnapping of Karen. A job that was supposed to snag Heaven for her and Teddy's second-attempt at their arranged wedding to join the two yakuza families. Since Teddy tipped Heaven off and her and Hiro were able to better prepare for the attack once the exchange was made, leading to it going seriously wrong for them and Heaven emerges victorious. But in Book 3, only a small mention about what happened to Teddy as the result was written from his point of view, The rest of the time he was totally non-exsistant. Hiro, Heaven's sensai & love-intrest, is trying to patch things up with the now rescued Karen, but still feels torn in another direction. He won't say where, or who. Karen notices this change in him and their relationship and takes it out on Heaven, constinatly trying to start a fight and keep her away from Hiro. To get her mind off all this Heaven gets a job at an underground night club and accidently gets between best friend Cheryl and her new love-intrest a shady guy named Marcus, whom Heaven doesn't trust. Another distraction to Heaven's mission of becoming as smooth and blank as a pearl, is a phone call from her supposedly worried adoptive mother Meiko. Since when is she so concerned with Heaven's well-being? And why must she check-in her every move with her brother Masato who is keeping tabs on Heaven in LA. Does someone ELSE have a hidden agenda? The distressing thing is though, now being three books into this series it seems Heaven is getting farther and farther away from the original questions that motivated her to strike out on her own, who killed her brother at the wedding and why? Can this battle really be won?
January 29, 2016
Heaven and Cheryl, her roommate, are in Los Angeles. They go to a club, and Heaven ends up getting hired. The two get attacked by two thugs, but Heaven beats them both, easily. Hiro and Heaven have a major argument, and Heaven quits her training.
Heaven is attacked again by Yakuza, but is able to get away. She stops training with Hiro a second time when he tells her that her mother had called and he hadn't immediately informed her.
Cheryl has fallen for a guy named Marcus who is a gangster.
(One of the interesting things in these books is how there are one or two pages between sections, the pages being like diary entries by other major characters. It's kind of neat, and really moves the story along.)
Heaven really starts losing her self discipline and starts getting drunk a lot. She decides to try and change her life. Karen taunts her about Hiro, and says they are moving in together. Marcus and his thugs try to kill Heaven.
A very good third book in the series.
Heaven is attacked again by Yakuza, but is able to get away. She stops training with Hiro a second time when he tells her that her mother had called and he hadn't immediately informed her.
Cheryl has fallen for a guy named Marcus who is a gangster.
(One of the interesting things in these books is how there are one or two pages between sections, the pages being like diary entries by other major characters. It's kind of neat, and really moves the story along.)
Heaven really starts losing her self discipline and starts getting drunk a lot. She decides to try and change her life. Karen taunts her about Hiro, and says they are moving in together. Marcus and his thugs try to kill Heaven.
A very good third book in the series.
July 2, 2008
Eh. Still the same middling story and characters as the first two, but I read this one nearly as fast. Do with that what you will.
Karen (the girlfriend of Hiro, Heaven's crush) gets justifiably cranky about Heaven being around all the time (seeing as she was kidnapped and held hostage by scary Japanese mafia guys for three days because they got her confused with Heaven, and correctly surmised that both she and Hiro could be in more danger if they continue to spend time with Heaven), but is pretty much portrayed as a raging bitch. Oh well.
Karen (the girlfriend of Hiro, Heaven's crush) gets justifiably cranky about Heaven being around all the time (seeing as she was kidnapped and held hostage by scary Japanese mafia guys for three days because they got her confused with Heaven, and correctly surmised that both she and Hiro could be in more danger if they continue to spend time with Heaven), but is pretty much portrayed as a raging bitch. Oh well.
June 8, 2011
This book was very good. I had a connection to the mian character on many levels. She had a best friend that found ways to get her jobs or in a position, just like my friends, she has a crush on someone who has a girlfriend like I do. It was weird becuase the theme of the story is that a clear mind could take you through situations in life.I loved the action in the story and I cannot wait to read the other stories to come!!!!!
November 6, 2009
The third is much the same as the first two however some of the fighting is gone. There is still confrontation, romantic troubles, and friend trouble. All things a 19 year old deals with but with martial arts and death threats.
The character is growing up albeit a little at a time. Her new job is a source of amusement.
Another quick read.
The character is growing up albeit a little at a time. Her new job is a source of amusement.
Another quick read.
September 18, 2011
This book is great I was reading almost every minte of everyday. The charcter Heaven Kogo is a great addition to this book. The fighting, her blind romance for Hiro, and her silent fighting with Karen. My overall recomendation is a 5 star I recomend this to everyone who likes action
Read
January 19, 2008Love love love itttttt
haha.
haha.
May 28, 2010
Good book of the continuing story of Heaven. I think however the story is being drug out.
November 28, 2010
Not as good as the other books....these are easy reads but this particular one was missing many of the exciting elements that the other books had.
November 30, 2013
Still enjoying this series. It definitely goes in directions I don't expect. These books are very fast reads.
January 23, 2015
terrible
April 5, 2016
This book was awsome!!
June 23, 2010
Dramatic and moving.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews