Book details of 'The Toyotomi Blades'

Title	The Toyotomi Blades
Author(s)	Dale Furutani
ISBN	0312966679
Language	English
Published	August 1998
Publisher	St. Martin's Press

---

Back to shelf Fiction
Amazon.com info for The Toyotomi Blades

Score:

Vote for this book

The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'The Toyotomi Blades':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Furutani's mystery is readable, well-written, and intelligent. As only one example of the realism, he has a sleuth who does *not* take every chance to run off after the crooks himself, while avoiding giving any information to the authorities. The central character is a programmer, but technology does not play a large part in the story. Computers do get used twice, one time a little better than the other. First, the not so good. At one point in the story, a fax is received where an image can't be made out because of poor resolution. So, our hero suggests that computer enhancement be used to bring out the details. There is even some discussion of finding edges in an image, and all that. Unfortunately, there are two problems with the computer image recovery as described. The first is that computer enhancement of images requires a lot of understanding of optics, something which the author doesn't seem to have. Computer enhancement works well for bringing out detail in, for example, images where the contrast is very low. This has been used to find, for the first time, that Uranus has bands just like Jupiter and Saturn. Computer enhancement can also be used to sharpen fuzzy images. However, it does this by calculating, and then subtracting, effects due to optical dispersion and interference. In fact, the process described in the book, which eliminates small "errors," would ruin any possibility of doing this kind of image enhancement. The other problem is that the image in question is a fax. This means that it has already been digitized, at a very low resolution and contrast, which would, again, damage the chances for a successful image recovery. On the other hand, the computer mapping application used in the book is quite marvelous. The images that are of importance in the book turn out to be parts of a map. Not just any map: a treasure map. Our hero does not have all of the pieces, and the placement of some pieces that are available is unknown. But by comparing the possible arrangements of map pieces against known terrain, the characters in the book are able to come up with a reasonably short list of potential sites. This is quite realistic. In fact, it has been used in classical studies, not with maps, but with fragments of text on papyrus. By comparing snippets of text (I seem to recall one instance of four characters on two lines) with known works, researchers have been able to identify and even reassemble fragments that otherwise would have remained so much confetti. Overall, it's quite a delight to find something that uses computers realistically for once. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2000
Add my review for The Toyotomi Blades