The Gods of Heavenly Punishment: A Novel

I was unfamiliar with the author at first but am so glad I chose this book. I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read and I am now looking forward to following Ms. Epstein's work.

I won't summarize the story as the other reviewers have already done so, so I'll just say that I don't typically read a lot of historical fiction and I was pleasantly surprised by Epstein's novel. The story is just substantive enough to feel satisfying (and educational) yet not so heavy that I feel I have to trudge through it. I found the balance between the personal stories of the characters and the historical backdrop and details to be perfect. I also enjoyed Epstein's writing - lyrical and beautiful but never overly ornate. I was eager to turn the pages all the way through and emerged a fan of historical fiction, and I look forward to reading more about Japan and China.

I'll also add that the gentleness depicted on the beautiful cover belies the difficult themes that appear inside the book: war atrocities, infidelity, betrayal, survival, etc. However, it never feels too heavy or too much. Some readers who may want a heavier, deeper or more in-depth treatment of these themes may find this novel somewhat deficient in that sense. For what I was looking for, though - an entertaining and educational read - this was quite satisfying.

It takes a special writer to produce an "epic" novel. "Epic" and "sweeping" imply a great breadth of a story line in terms of both time and characters. Jennifer Cody Epstein deserves kudos for her new novel, "The Gods of the Heavenly Punishment", which takes the reader from Tokyo 1935 to Los Angeles 1962, with characters who are as different as Japanese and Americans can be in that era. The unifying point of the novel is a green ring that survives both love and war and brings those two "different" peoples together.

Jennifer Epstein concentrates on relationships in her story. Oh, yes, there are large events like the 1945 fire bombing of Tokyo that destroyed most of the city, and, earlier, the Doolittle raid in 1942. That raid, flown by brave US army airmen, struck the first blow after Pearl Harbor on the Japanese home island. Many of the planes didn't have enough fuel to return safely to the ships they had taken off from and crashed into Japanese-controlled mainland China. Their crews, the ones who survived the crashes, were often captured, tortured, and sometimes put to death by their Japanese captors. But Epstein looks at the relationships in both the American and Japanese home fronts and how the Doolittle raid and the fire bombing and the fighting devastated lives in both places.

But if Epstein examines war, she also looks at the peacetime which preceded and succeeded the war. The prewar years in both countries was a time when the protagonists met and, sometimes, fell in love. Some fell in lust, and some just fell into relationships that differed from any they had experienced before. The post war period, too, produced changes in character's lives; losses and uncertainties were acknowledged and somehow made right.

Epstein's main characters, Yoshi, Bill, Lacy, lived and experienced the horrors of WW2 in different lands. They all lost loved ones, as did millions of people world wide. But the history, and the promise, of a small green ring brought them all together. This is quite a story. I think most readers will be quite affected by it. I know I was.

"The Gods of Heavenly Punishment" is the second book published by Jennifer Cody Epstein. The novel, which is largely, most importantly set in Japan, before, during, and after World War II, follows [[ASIN:B002EUH0KM The Painter from Shanghai]], about a noted female Chinese artist, which I have previously read, liked, and reviewed in these pages. Epstein, who lived in Japan for five years, clearly has a particular interest in the Far East; and there can be no question but that she follows up on her interest with significant research.

Epstein's current publication centers on fifteen-year old Yoshi Kobayashi, daughter of a seemingly rather ordinary Japanese carpenter turned builder, who is a great believer in the glorious future of the Japanese Empire. Yoshi's mother, however, is another story, an apparently mixed-race though largely Japanese woman schooled in the United Kingdom, with the ability to speak the Queen's English, impressive French, and secrets to keep. Also involved in this tale are the American pilot Cameron Richards Jr., (Cam), a brave American pilot taken prisoner after the 1942 Doolittle air raid over Japan, which struck the first, morale-building raid after the Japanese sneak attack on the American installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Unfortunately, most of the planes involved in Doolittle's raid didn't have sufficient fuel to return safely to the carriers they had left, or to reach the areas of mainland China that were not Japanese-occupied. Their crews, if captured, were usually tortured and killed by their Japanese captors. Also involved are Anton Reynolds, a talented Czech architect who helped modernize Tokyo's prewar skyline, and then helped American forces to destroy it. And his son Billy, who will be one of the American troops to occupy Tokyo after the Japanese surrender. Which will, as is widely known, occur after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, as is not so widely known, the March, 1945 firebombing, with napalm, of Tokyo, which left 100 thousand dead within hours, and more than half the city in ashen, smoking ruins. The rather naïve young Yoshi's life will, as you might expect, be blown to smithereens; she will have to rebuild it as best she can. And there is a silver ring with a green stone that wanders through the story.

The author is an adjunct professor of writing at New York's Columbia University; she lives in Brooklyn. She does very well with her Japanese background, and she is the unusual female author who can write powerfully about war. But she has chosen to begin her extensive backstory quite a few years before the war's beginning, and with characters that don't necessarily have that much to do with the story she will ultimately tell. She is more than 2/3 through her 380 page book, at more or less page 300, before she hits her stride with the firebombing. Once she does, I couldn't put the book down. Until then, it was touch or go whether I was going to finish it. It all depends on your level of patience.

I don't read a lot of historical fiction, but like Jennifer's last book, which I also loved, I found myself completely swept up in a different time and place. Her knowledge of Japan and it's history made me feel like I was there and I truly cared about each of the characters. She does it so subtly with the language, inside the homes and in the culture that I became transported in to the world she created. The devastating event in history was powerful and horrifying to read, while she was able to share perspectives from both sides of the war with uncanny empathy. Another reviewer mentioned that there was too much early development but i totally disagree. I felt that was one of the best parts of the book, getting to know each person and developing an appreciation for Tokyo that i wouldn't have had without it. I highly recommend reading this if you want to get lost in the world of fiction, while also learning something at the same time. Who could ask for more than that?

Jennifer Cody Epstein's far-reaching novel envelops you in the lives and worlds of six protagonists, all directly affected by the American firebombing of Tokyo in WWII. With a deep understanding of the events and cultures of this period, Epstein weaves an incredibly compelling novel with suspenseful narrative and rich prose. Somehow, she writes with an authoritative and balanced voice for both the American and Japanese characters, and lets the details lead readers to their own conclusions about war, and this war.

Normally, a novel set in Asia during WWII wouldn't be my first choice, but I so enjoyed Epstein's first piece of historical fiction, "The Painter from Shanghai," that I was excited to try this as well. "Heavenly Punishment" has a more complicated structure than the first novel, balancing many characters and time periods, and it does so successfully. I was enrapt in particular by the characters of Hana, and Cam Richards and his wife, and was left with tear-filled eyes after the chapter on Tokyo during the firebombing. I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy history, a thought-provoking read, or simply a good story, as all three are beautifully delivered here.

The blurb on this book says it is the story of a young Japanese girl caught in the 1945 firebombing of Toyko and the lives that intersect with hers. That is a fair description of the book because we do see Yoshi as a child in 1935, in 1945 Toyko, and finally on a 1962 visit to Los Angeles.

However, for me, the center of the story is that night in March 1945 when in a few hours 16 square miles of Toyko was destroyed with over 100,000 civilians killed. The lives of the characters in the story, Japanese and American, are described as part of the events leading up to that night and part of the aftermath.

The story of Yoshi and her mother is interesting but more compelling to me is the telling of how the upheaval of war separates people and brings them together in unlikely and fateful ways. The manner in which the author moves the characters around is credible as is her use of a keepsake ring to link people as it passes between them.

The author is very effective in setting the scene. One of the most vivid sections of the story describes the American fliers before and during the Doolittle air raids on Toyko in 1942.

After dropping their bombs, the pilot looks down and sees what "seemed surreal--he almost thought his tired eyes were making the scene up. But no; when he looked again the solid building really was blowing up. Not like an explosion, but like an enormous, brick-walled balloon. Its four walls were expanding, pulling away from one another as though the god of wind was blowing it full of hot breath....the factory blew apart, spewing ash and debris in all directions. Bits of matter were flung festively aloft."

Almost 70 years later, the firebombing of so many Japanese cities may be controversial. The author neither justifies nor condemns the bombing. However, there is a scene set in the desert of Utah in 1943 where architects have built a brick structure like those to be found in Germany and a wooden structure like those in Japan. The structures are bombed.

The wife of one of the architects says, "The American Army is clearly planning to bomb non-military areas." She shrugs when he answers, "You think that makes it murder?" He adds, "It's not murder...It's war."

For me, at this remove in time, the era as here presented is but ancestral of a continuing history of leaders ordering death and plenty of people willing to carry out the orders.

The author made one major blunder. A baby was born in 1942. When we catch a glimpse of him in 1962 he's described as "a tall, long-limbed boy." He comes out of a house wearing a baseball mitt, "took the porch steps two at a time...wheeled his bike to the curb...pedaled off..." This person MUST be 19 or 20 and is therefore not a "boy" and unlikely to be playing with a mitt and riding a bike.

This blunder did oveshadow the last section of the story for me. However, overall this is a good book. Well written, interesting characters, careful plot. A lot of the writing came off-the-page and I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next.

This is a good book and I enjoyed it, but it is flawed. I can't quite put my finger on it.
I think it is the time span and the short period spent in developing the characters.
There are parallel stories that never meet. Example: Billy is a minor character
until the last 50 pages and then behold, he becomes the story. The setting for this
book is Japan before WW2, and after the war. The descriptions of both periods are well
done. The best character in my estimation was Cam, but he disappears until the last few pages.
This is an epic and in the telling I was occasionally lost.

This book opens on a lighthearted moment atop a ferris wheel at a fair in 1935, as college student Cam Richards finds himself falling in love with Lacy Robertson.

The next section is set in Karuizawa, Japan, in the same year, at a business dinner hosted by architect Anton Reynolds. His stolid wife Meryle and disappointingly "sensitive" son Billy are in attendance, of course. Also attending are master carpenter Kenji Kobayashi, his Japanese-born, foreign-educated wife Hana and their daughter Yoshi.

These are the people Epstein follows through the war years. Cam Richards becomes one of the Doolittle Raiders. Anton Reynolds builds Japanese buildings in Utah for the Air Force's test runs. Kenji works to build Japan's "New Paradise" in Manchuria. Billy becomes a translator for the Occupation forces, while Yoshi is doing her patriotic duty in Tokyo and trying to take care of her increasingly erratic mother on the eve of the Tokyo firebombing.

Through the eyes of these players, Epstein highlights the arrogance and ambition, the fear and pain, the horror, the hope and irreversible damage on both sides during the war.

The ARC is in rough shape - there are several dropped words, grammar errors, continuity errors and misused homonyms that I hope will be scrubbed from the final publication. Even those annoyances are just quibbles, though, because I loved the structure of this novel. I love it when an author trusts her readers to make connections and draw conclusions without spoon-feeding. I think Epstein walks that line beautifully, and the ending to this novel was perfect. Recommended.

This is a story about how war destroys people's lives. But it is also about how people can survive war and rebuild their lives. The author, Jennifer Cody Epstein, builds her story around the lives of several people, some from Japan and some from the US. We meet them before the war starts, then again during the war, and later when the war has ended. We only get glimpses of their lives through each of these periods but somehow it is enough. We meet a young man and the girl of his dreams on a ferris wheel in NY. Later we find him on the Doolittle raid. We meet other characters, some from Japan and others from the US, at a garden party in pre-war Tokyo. Later we encounter them again, leading up to the Tokyo firebombing and then again 20 years after the war is over. It is this mix of time, people, and places that makes this story so interesting. The book opens in 1935. Then 7 years suddenly pass and it is 1942. 3 more years pass and Tokyo is being firebombed and the war is over. 17 more years pass and we are in Los Angeles.

The book does start slowly as Epstein introduces her characters. For awhile I wasn't sure whether I was going to enjoy the book. But once the story began to concentrate on the main character and the Tokyo firebombing I found it difficult to put down. Small pieces introduced earlier are seen later as larger parts of the puzzle. And the story is like a puzzle in a way. We see a character after 10 years and we wonder why are they so different? What happened in their life? As Epstein fills in the pieces it makes the story more interesting and made me want to keep reading to find what happened and what will happen. The ending of the story was predictable but that didn't detract from the story at all.

"The Gods of Heavenly Punishment" is a story set in both Japan and the United States during World War II. It follows many different characters, both Japanese and American, through their experiences during the war. Due to the setting and time period in this book, I'm sure you can imagine that some of the subject matter of this book is certainly heavy indeed but I can promise that if you stick it out, you'll be rewarded with a pretty good story full of interesting characters and set against several world changing events.

Each chapter follows a set of different characters although some of the characters appear in more than one chapter. All of the chapters come together in the end to tell a whole story. Because all of the stories feel very separate (some more or less than others), I kept waiting to see how they would come together, which was a tiny bit distracting.

There were many interesting characters in this book. I was especially intrigued by Hana and her daughter, Yoshi. There is a lot of mystery surrounding Hana throughout the book and I really liked putting all the pieces together to see what happened to her. Yoshi definitely fascinated me as well.

The writing in this book was really good too. Even when I was a little bit frustrated by trying to see how all of the parts were coming together, the writing definitely kept me going. I will be anxious to see where else Epstein's writing takes her.