GUARDIANS OF THE LATTE STONES

A Japanese soldier encounters unforeseen enemies in Aleja’s supernatural war novel.

Seventeen-year-old Yoshida Takeshi hopes that joining the Japanese army will free him from the poverty and abuse of his aunt and uncle’s home. Perhaps by serving his country, he can make enough money to support himself and his younger sister Yuki. The only complication: There’s a war going on—the Japanese empire against the United States—and his service may require him to die honorably for the emperor. He and his unit are sent to the island of Omiyajima (previously known as Guam), a beautiful paradise—at least until the war takes its toll. Bombs flatten the jungle and his comrades commit atrocities against the local Chamorro people. Takeshi participates as little as he can manage without attracting attention to himself, but he knows what they are doing is wrong—and some hidden force on the island appears to agree. Invisible enemies attack the Japanese soldiers from the forest, leaving strange marks on those able to escape. With American battleships threatening from the ocean and mysterious attacks coming from the island, Takeshi turns to a Japanese-speaking Chamorro named Elena for help. But is it too late for those who have offended the spirit ancestors of Guam? Aleja’s smooth prose expertly builds tension, as here when Takeshi gets his first taste of the forest threat: “The trees began to move around Takeshi again. The strain in his eyes caused him to rub the water from them. Each time he did so, something seemed to encircle him, watching him. It moved through the branches like a snake, not like a man.” Not exactly a mystery or a horror yarn, the story powerfully explores the tremendous capacity of humans to be inhumane, even outside the context of the war. Aleja cleverly tells the story of Japanese-occupied Guam in an unexpected way that captures the tragic destruction of militarism.

An atmospheric story of war and loss.