Ocean State Libraries

For a stoic ronin such as Kubikiri Asa, a samurai assigned to test the Shogun's sword and behead prisoners, the moment before death is of great importance. Because of this, Asa will often listen to the stories of those about to be executed and pay respect to the lives of these often unfortunately maligned prisoners. Sometimes scary, often quirky, and occasionally very sweet; it goes to show how people of different walks of life can meet the same brutal,...

It's the final volume of Samurai Executioner, and like the previous nine volumes, the last is a combination of life's varying tides of good fortune and ill circumstance.  The woman who once stole the weapons of samurai cops is becoming a cop herself. It's a story of gender struggles in a time long past. All the while, criminals keep losing their heads to Asa the decapitator. But one criminal might leave something behind that could hurt our favorite...

Striking similarities between Lone Wolf and Cub and Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's sidebar story line, Samurai Executioner (known as Kubikiri Asa in Japan), are evident in the cool attitude, rebellious honor, and unflappable bushido of the lead characters of both series, but readers will delight in the whole new crime-fiction genre of Edo-era samurai spirit in Samurai Executioner. Here, we enter a world of harsh and violent crime and the forces that...

"Five years ago, little Gwenny's father found, inside a bottle, a map with instructions on how to reach the mysterious Isle of 100,000 Graves and its legendary treasures-- and then he vanished. Now Gwenny, having stumbled across another bottle-shipped map, enlists the dubious help of a shipful of pirates, sets out to find the island, and her long-lost dad. Little does she realize that the Isle comes by its ominous name honestly, as the location of...