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Title: Tales of the Bore-tori
Review: It is amazing the contrast between this book and the first three of the series. While the first three had a spare Japanese style, this book breaks with all the strengths of the first three. The first person narration of Takeo is abandoned for boring and overly developed third person narration. It lacks any plot, instead digressing in developing boring characters, many of which bear little resemblance to the earlier books. The magical realism of the trilogy is abandoned with the development of a completely non-believable story and new over the top elements invented for the book (morphing of characters, shamanism, etc.). Rarely in other literary series has the drop off been this pronounced. It's like a bad movie sequel, where the star has been replaced with a B-list actor.
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