Shibumi

Rating:
Summary: Rich development of powerful characters you'll never forget!
Review: When you read the passage on the meaning of Shibumi - or balance - it will change your life just as it did with the remarkable characters in this book. It is so rare these days to have such creative and complex individuals described so well that you think you've known them all your life. The struggles, value of friendship, insights into life, culture, and business greed are all too real and compelling. The swings from the violence of early youth to the mature simplicity of later life are exceptionally captured by Trevanian's pen. Once a year you'll want to lock yourself up in a mountain cabin and read it from cover to cover

Rating:
Summary: Distinctive
Review: Concur with other reviews just read - The best of any of these novels I've ever read. After scores of Ludlum, et al, we see Shibumi unlike any of the others. You are there and more; profoundly vivid. Regrettably, Trevanian was not as prolific as the balance of these type authors. This one I savored every word

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Intellegent Novel
Review: One of the best thrillers , Or Maybe Even the best one I Have ever read ..... beutifully written , very intellegen , teaches the reader about different cultures , beutifull , simply beutifull.... i recommend it with all my heart

Rating:
Summary: Simply One of the best books ever written
Review: This is a great book for introducing new readers to; mystery, espionage, adventure, history, romance, and irony. As the author of the books, "The Eiger Sanction" and "The Loo Sanction", Trevanian is a must-read for anyone interested in good, exciting, edge of your seat, writing. I recommend it to all my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Effortless perfection
Review: A quote, if I may:

== Quote begin ==

"Shibumi, sir?" Nicholai knew the word, but only as it applied to gardens or architecture, where it connoted an understated beauty. "How are you using the term, sir?"

"Oh, vaguely. And incorrectly, I suspect. A blundering attempt to describe an ineffable quality. As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is . . . how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that."

== Quote end ==

Combination of the best ideologies east and west. Being extraordinarily skilled yet genuinely humble. And so on.

The application of such a principle to one's life in itself makes the book worth reading. One may view the book as yet another thriller, or Hel as yet another unbelievable character - or one can try and truly understand what the book talks about.

The book is strong motivation for being better than who you are now; a never ending quest to be perfect, yet understanding that whilst perfection never exists, in itself should not stop one from trying. An untiring read.

Rating:
Summary: 25 year old book, which is highly relevant in today's world.
Review: One of the best book I ever read. Must be read more than once to fully appreciate the commentary and nuances. The best review was written by the highly secretive Trevanian, himself, at page 105 (hardback):

"The book was an elaborate joke in the form of a report and commentary on a fictional master's game played at the turn of the century. While the play of the "masters" seemed classic and even brilliant to the average player, there were little blunders and irrelevant placements that brought frowns to the more experienced of the readers... The book was, in fact, a subtle and eloquent parody of the intellectual parasitism of the critic, and much of the delight lay in the knowledge that both the errors of play and the articulate nonsense of the commentary were so arcane that most readers would nod along in grave agreement."

I.E. It just a book.


Rating:
Summary: Pure Cheese.
Review: I adore "Shibumi". It truly IS the silliest book in the world, and my most-beloved guilty pleasure. Every time I get sick, or have a long, boring trip, I pull this piece of delightful trash out, and prepare to be preached at about the degeneration of culture, and "astounded" again at ubermensch Nicholai Hel's feats of assassination and mystical sex. It makes me laugh out loud every time. A charmingly-overwrought male romance novel that is perfect for a rainy afternoon with a big bag of potato chips.

If you like well-written, cheesy, pseudo-intellectual pulp, then this book is definitely for you. Put your brain on hold, and prepare to meet the Most Elite Human Being on Earth (tm).

Rating:
Summary: By the two vaporous balls of the Holy Ghost...
Review: ...This is on my list of the top five books ever.

Screw you, Goldfarb. You're an idiot. Just read the book. It's fiction, for Christ's sake.

This book is phenomenal. I read it for the 2nd time recently. It is beautiful, hysterical, moving.

Grow up, Goldfarb. You're clearly just another quasi-intellectual in search of a sheepish audience whose inteligence is dwarfed by your own feeble mind (which really narrows it down; I mean, that only leaves like 5 people. In the world.)

So shove it, you cretin. Go read some Bill Maher or Stephen King or something.

Rating:
Summary: The Book of How to be a Man in a craven Age
Review: Nicolai Hel: Master Assassin, Philosopher, modern day Samurai, spelunker, expert Lover, Warrior. Man.

Let me repeat that: Man. I discovered Trevanian and "Shibumi" in high school, and I must confess that it completely changed my life. I vowed to live my life as Nicolai Hel would have, had he been a teen-ager in Utah in the 1980's. Happily, it worked out.

Trevanian concocted this wildly wicked, politically pungent, nastily anti-PC rattling tale of assassination, global conspiracy, New World Order, CIA incompetence, and global capitalist corruption in the 1980's, but it remains a masterwork of espionage fiction and a blueprint for Samurai living even in these dark and mediocre times. Frankly, it is a road-map for becoming a Man.

Protagonist Hannah Stern, a Jewish American activist nearly slaughtered by Arab terrorists in an assassination strike in the Rome airport, seeks aid and comfort from the reclusive Nicolai Hel, now rusticating with his exquisite Oriental lover in a chateau high the Pyrenees, secluded among his Basque supporters, stolid in his Japanese Shinto meditation. Hel hates the mindless activity of squalid bourgeois society, batters his Volvo with rocks, enjoys the philosophical freedom of his Japanese garden and meditational lodge---and is nonetheless pulled into a war of wits, blood, and steel with the CIA and the amorphous but all-consuming "Mother Company".

"Shibumi" is rebellious, cynical, heroic, delicious. Hel, son of a doomed Russian countess, learns quickly from his mentor, a Japanese General presiding over the rape of Nanking. He becomes a Master Assassin, making his fortune from the misery he deservedly inflicts on others that would make the world of Man a galactic Hell. Hel now retreats, like a Brown Recluse, in his sumptuous castle in the land of the Basque, cloaked in anonymity and fortified by his exotic Oriental lover. But perfection can last only so long.

"Shibumi" is Trevanian at his best, and as such is espionage fiction at is best. It is cynical, wicked, brutal, and nasty: as a result it introduces you, the reader, to a world---not of black and white---but of grey, a world in which killing is merely a means by which one preserves the status quo. Or honor. Or anonymity.

"Shibumi", I think, is about self-awareness. It is unflinchingly politically incorrect, so be warned before you start your descent. It is expertly stocked with unforgettable characters, and depending on your level of unabashed romanticism, will probably make you cry. For all of these reasons, "Shibumi"---if you're adventurous in spirit, anyway---is a book you have to read before you die. And in the happiest compliment I can pay to Trevanian, it may change the manner by which you die. Good luck.

Rating:
Summary: Good.
Review: Travanian's Shibumi was an excellent book. It was fast moving and highly entertaining. The first two thirds of the story were mostly about the Nicolai Hel's earlier life from childhood to the present. These two thirds were extremely good and kept me turning page after page. Travanian created really vivid characters and supported them with superb dialogue. These characters told me who and what they were by their conversation. I really like Nicolai Hel (Travanian's protagonist). Nicolai was an impressive and very interesting character. He spoke several languages and had an eerie ability to sense and identify people he couldn't see in the story which allowed him to be one of the world best assassins. Nicolai was in a search for shibumi, a state of effortless serenity.
Nicolai's eerie ability in the story was unrealistic, but it did help him when someone tried to shoot him, attack him, or take his picture. Another unbelievable talent Nicolai had was the ability to tell the moods of the people around him by the auras they gave off. I thought that the writing became less entertaining in the last part of the book. It wasn't that the writing was bad. The story was simply less compelling than the first parts of the book.
I thoroughly enjoyed Shibumi even with the unrealistic but effective sixth sense and aura reading abilities. While I read the book, I was able to suspend disbelief. The story is well written and entertaining, I recommend Travanian's Shibumi to all readers who like adventure novels.