Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter
Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter is a collection of historical mystery fantasy short stories by Richard Parks, the first volume in a series featuring his sword and sorcery character Yamada no Goji. It was first published in simultaneous trade paperback and ebook form by Prime Books in January 2013. Summary. The book collects ten novelettes and short stories by the author, one original to the collection, together with an introduction by the author. Relation to other works. Parks later integrated "Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge," the second story in the collection, into his first novel of Yamada  no Goji, ""; the story as a whole forming the novel's opening section and its closing lines the novel's conclusion. Reception. Reviewer Don D'Ammassa, noting the appeal oriental fantasies have for him, "perhaps in part because there are relatively few of them," finds their combination with Richard Parks, "one of the few consistent and relatively prolific writers of short fantasy fiction," a convincing reason to buy the book. He describes the protagonist as "a kind of Elric figure, ... [b]ut where Elric was a simple character who occasionally gave vent to his guilty angst but showed few other emotions, Yamada  is much more fully drawn over the course of the ten stories included here." He rates the stories "quite good and despite some superficial similarities quite varied as well. It's very hard to do this kind of story well at short length, but Parks carries it off again and again." He feels "[t]he first two [stories] plus 'Sanji's Demon' ... probably the strongest in the collection."