Rufolo Reviews: Sisters of the Sword #1 The Warrior's Path by Maya Snow

The best thing about visiting my nan: seeing my little cousins
The second best thing about visiting my nan: Taking them on a tour of all the charity shops in a DYING town and finding cheap books - like this one!
I'd say this is one of the most exciting historical fiction books I've ever read. It's about two princesses called Kimi and Hana whose father, a Samurai lord gets assassinated by a power-hungry, back-stabbing (literally) rival. They're forced to flee from their home and soon arrive at a jito, a school for training young boys to be Samurai, so they change their identities and from then on, it's like Mulan as a revenge story - only Japanese, obviously.
It's a pretty good story; because it's set largely in this school, you really see the characters improving and developing as they train. I quite liked Kimi and Hana, they're at least well-outlined characters, the sister-sister relationship was nice and I think Maya Snow deliberately leaves room for them develop throughout the series. The other characters are really good as well, if not better. Master Goku who runs the jito is one of the best teachers in a book and the villains are quite complex as well, they certainly evoke emotion from the reader.
The action sequences are really intense, it's quite violent for a book that seems aimed for children around twelve, less even. I'm not against that though, as plenty of kids that age are reading the Hunger Games or the Enemy or even playing Grand Theft Auto.

Anyway, back to the review, there's some good insight to Japanese culture and social history, the only real negatives I can think of is the meditating. There were twists and drama and a few somewhat complex characters, but I think there were times when this book just wasn't AS deep as the author thought it was and when I look back and compare it with books like Viking's Dawn and The Fire of Ares, it's still good, but not great historical fiction.
That said, there IS potential for this series to go deep and character heavy. This book is high on excitement and an enjoyable story, entertaining and educational - 7/10.