One of Takeo's inherent gifts is supernormal hearing he can learn the song of the floor and approach his enemy in silence. The 'Nightingale Floor' that must be crossed is in a warlord's castle, constructed so that any footfall upon it will cause it to sing a warning. When his skill and courage have administered just vengeance and won him the woman he loves, the Tribe asserts prior claims on him and he cannot deny them. His adoptive father has named him as heir, but he is not free to choose where his destiny and his loyalty lie. Takeo comes from a persecuted minority sect known as the Hidden, evidently Christians in a land of Buddhism and Shinto, but the faith that has taught him never to take life is gainsaid by his parentage which commits him to the ways of the Tribe, a shadowy network whose inherited talents have made them professional assassins.

Much is left to conjecture and the fun is in picking up the clues. The names are certainly Japanese but Japan is never named. Isn't that a Hokusai landscape in the background? The figure of Kurosawa's Sanjuro seems to stalk the pages, nonchalantly lopping off a head or an arm in passing. The village shrines are Shintoist, the enlightened one is the Buddha. Surely these are samurai we are reading about, shoguns and ninjas.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the nomenclature will identify the setting more precisely. Children are well-accustomed to this mode they will not feel short-changed.

On one level this is a thrilling tale of love, violence, loyalty and betrayal, fast-moving, set in a far-away country long ago, where people and places have exotic names. Halfway through the novel their stories converge and it becomes clear that in this intricately structured society there is no such thing as self-determination. One such hostage is Kaede half of her 15 years have been spent in pawn and now she is to be traded in marriage to Lord Shigeru of the Otori clan, who has adopted a young man, Takeo, sole survivor of a massacre in a hill village prosecuted by Lido of the Tohan clan. Two clans invade and annex each other's territory, a third secures itself by arranged marriages and an elaborate system of hostages. Every life is owned by another, but may be owed elsewhere.

The feudal society created by Lian Hearn is labyrinthine.

The nightingale floor book