Blood Ninja by Nick Lake

In the course of a day, Taro's entire life changes: His father is murdered before his eyes, and Taro is taken by a mysterious ninja on a perilous journey toward safety. Someone wants Taro dead, but who -- and why? With his best friend, Hiro, and their ninja guide Shusaku, Taro gets caught in the crossfire of a bitter conflict between rival lords for control of imperial Japan. As Taro trains to become a ninja himself, he's less and less sure that he wants to be one. But when his real identity is revealed, it becomes impossible for Taro to turn his back on his fate.

Personally, i did not enjoy reading this book, i found that this book was (no offense to anyone who enjoyed reading this book) agonizing to read, halfway through i kind of wanted to stop reading. I find that this book explains too much about what's happening and takes away some of the suspense, in books, i find that foreshadowing is a good way to go, but to explain what is being foreshadowed is ok when done once or twice in the book, but repetitively doing it is very annoying. Personally, in books, i think that it is more fun to try to figure out what is being foreshadowed rather than being told every time. To me, that was the downfall of this book and also the reason why i would not recommend others to read this book. Additionally, i found it a bit annoying how the book uses some Japanese dialect but doesnt explain some of the meanings of the words and that i had to google translate some of the words. However, this book did have quite an interesting plot and did have interesting characters but I will not be reading the sequel to this book. The only reason that i can think of to recommend this book is to read the overall plot of the story and to get a feel of feudal Japan... although, i'm not sure how accurate the feudal Japan is from the real feudal Japan.