Introduction to Volume 1: It was the Heian period (794-1185), and in the capital of Kyoto, there was a renowned yin-yang master named Abe no Seimei. It was a time when darkness remained as darkness, and at night, people, demons, and monsters all lived in the darkness of the same capital, breathing in secret. Abe no Seimei was a yin-yang master of the fourth rank, belonging to the onmyōryō dormitory in the Ouchiura. He deals with spirits of the dead, living spirits, demons, and other mysterious c...
It was interesting to read some historical fiction that wasn’t set in the Edo period for once. I liked this quite a bit, but it’s very much episodic, and there’s surprisingly little character development – I think the author just wanted to tell a bunch of Heian-era ghost/demon stories. The writing style has lots of single-sentence paragraphs, so there’s a lot of blank space on each page, which makes it a faster read. There seem to be a ton of further books in the series; I may pick the next one up at some point, but there’s no rush because there’s no broader story arc that it would be continuing.
The Heian-era setting meant some vocab challenges, at least for me.