Brought to you by OBS reviewer Alina

Beware of possible spoilers 

As a child, I was fascinated by martial arts. The moment I discovered a Shotokan Karate club in my neighborhood, I was there ready to train. And I loved watching Kung-fu movies with my dad. I also read a lot of specialty magazines, but never a manga or a novel having ninjas as main characters. And the animes scare me.

Well, here we have ninjas in training. There’s 6 of them: Cassie, a 16 yo kind-hearted girl, whom we meet on her way to master Kitsune’s school for Shinobis – a special kind of warrior, with supernatural powers, who never age and can summon spirits to help them become more powerful; Hanran, a tall, muscular, but shy boy who fancies Cassie; Luna and her brother Yami; Tabby, who’s a sugar addict; and Kuroi, an older boy they join at the school to form Shinobi 7 or Ninja 7, one of the school’s 13 Sectors. The story is told through the points of view of these 6 characters, each of them having an important role in its development. Their world, Shaaku Den, is torn apart by war. Two Shinobi clans have united to form Blackthorn, a monster that destroyed the others and threatens to enslave the whole world. The only one left to fight them is the Kitsune clan, who are trying to train new warriors to protect the towns’ people and end the war. The three teachers at the school, Akira, Shinichi and Zuko have the huge responsibility of keeping the appearance: their master, Kitsune, has returned powerless from the Spirit world, after trying to destroy the Mekai-Ishi, a small violet jewel.

I experienced a lot of mixed feelings while reading the book. The prologue left me completely baffled. I could not figure out what was going on, who died, if they died, and why. The writing was very jumbled, totally incomprehensible to me. I braced myself and read on, and the book really sucked me in. The story is very entertaining and exciting. It always makes you want to know what comes next. The dialogue is funny and adequate to the 8 to 16 year old characters, who are very lovable and true-to-life. The writing also picked up a bit, so in the end I kind of started understanding what the writer had wanted to do. I also realized that the book was written by someone very young and inexperienced, but who definitely has a lot of potential. She knows what she’s talking about and is not afraid to experiment with writing techniques. It is obvious that she has given her story and characters a lot of thought, but it would have been good if she had cut some unnecessary childish dialogue and descriptions that did not add to the plot and given more attention to building a more credible scenario. The author was influenced heavily by her our readings, especially the Harry Potter and  the Lord of the Ring books, I would guess, but that is to be expected from a very young author.

She knows her material very well: her little ninjas sleep on futons, write in kanji, fight with kusari-gamas and shurikens, they address each other with Cassie-chan for girls and Kaze-san for boys, and eat noodles and rice for breakfast. However, the school is very weird. Not only because it’s set in another world, where people fly around spitting fire and sharing bodies with evil spirits, but also because the students are not provided with soap, towels etc. I understand they are at war and they need to learn what deprivation means, but still, it’s a school, not a nazi camp. The library is shelves and shelves of books and scrolls that need dusting. Wasn’t this a school? Are the students from Sector 7 the only ones to use it? Ever? Also, when they drink water, they all share the same jug, because ‘Shinobis don’t use cups’. Very unhygienic and unrealistic, at the same time. If they were so backward, at least they wouldn’t have a hospital, but they do.

;There are times when the sentences don’t make sense. Here’s just one example: ‘Everyone lost hope that master Kitsune truly was a goner…’.  Does that mean they wanted him gone and actually knew that he was going to return and were not happy about it? These may well be just mistakes that have been amended, but since my copy was unedited, I did find quite a few of this kind of sentences and spelling and grammar mistakes. There were many times when I just laughed out loud, even if the situation was tragic or at least very serious. But how can you not laugh when a mean character ‘turned ballistic’. The combat training sensei raises giant spiders and unleashes them in the labyrinth where Sector 7 conduct their simulation mission: ‘You killed my spiders? You killed my babies?’ (Dragons, anyone?)

I can definitely say I liked this book. It’s messy, but cute and dark and funny and deep, at times. I warmly recommend it to young people interested in martial arts and Asian culture in general. I am curious how the story will evolve and especially how L. Benitez as a writer will evolve.

*An ebook copy of this book was provider by the author in exchange for an honest review.