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The First Attack Position and Other Lessons from the Paperback Ryu

It is the novel’s climactic fight scene, finally. After more than 300 pages or so, filled with all kinds of intrigue in foreign and domestic places, well-placed descriptions of graphic and presumably exotic romantic encounters, and lots of clinically detailed violence, we have reached the moment where the good guy meets the bad. Larynxes have been lacerated; sternums shattered, and there is swordplay, with lots of katana that glitter and flicker and sparkle in the adjective-rich lexicon of the author. Page after page, bodies are dismembered, hacked, slashed, chopped, and diced. And now the big confrontation is at hand and we know it’s just going to be a doozy of a battle because the hero, katana clutched in his fists, has just taken the “first attack position.” Or something like that.

These novels—there is probably one in your library right now and if not, you know the kind, centered around Asia and with a one-word Japanese title— are usually exciting to read and entertaining. Occasionally too, they demonstrate some research on the part of the author. But when the plot calls for characters to take up their trusty katana, too often more imagination is employed than is a reliance on reliable background sources.