by Jennifer Cody Epstein
The defining event of The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is the firebombing of Tokyo in WWII. However, what the book is really about is people and the way they affect one another. Fifteen-year-old Yoshi’s experiences leading up to and following the firebombing will be “shaped by those considered the en...
Bleak, uncompromising, honest, raw, and hard to put down.Real review to follow.
Historical fiction set during wartime is a favorite genre of mine (or, I suppose, a 'favorite' -- I'm not a fan of war) because there's a real focus on the ordinary, everyday people against a massive canvas. Jennifer Cody Epstein's novel represents what I most love about this genre: it's illuminati...
This is a multi layered book. As the reader, I found myself both liking and hating many of the characters. All are interwoven in an epic story. The book takes place during WWII. I loved and hated the Japanese, and I loved and hated the Americans. Who was right? Who was wrong? I loved the cha...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Learning new things is my favorite part about reading. This book opened my eyes to the events in Japan both before and after WWII. The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is told from the point of view of a young Japanese girl, certainly like nothing I've read bef...
There's a lot going on in this novel, but it's not as hard to follow as it may seem at the start. It traces the lives of several American and Japanese people before, during, and after World War II. Some of them are friends, suddenly cast into enemy positions because their countries are at war. The f...
War makes enemies of former friends and pits them against each other. War puts countries and people on different sides of issues that previously were of no concern to them. They are forced to design weapons to destroy the country and countrymen of those they once cared about and previously did not h...