David Mitchell's 5th and most recent book is once more set almost entirely in Japan. In 1799 Jacob De Zoet is a young clerk sent by the Dutch East India Company to Dejima, an artifical island trading post in Nagasaki harbour. He's tasked with sorting out their books and soon learns just about everyone there is corrupt in some way or form. He develops a crush on a young Japanese woman but before a relationship can develop she's sold into virtual slavery as a nun at a monastry with sinister secrets.
This is probably Mitchell's most linear and straight story, there a few digressions and only 2 or 3 viewpoint characters.
The story does a good job of transporting you to a distant time and place. Every time you think you can predict what's going to happen a new twist occurs. In some ways it reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Baroque saga, no bad thing.
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