A Storm of Blossoms is a story focused on, and written from the perspective of, a Japanese-American woman named Kyoko Sugiyama. The story opens after she has already left Japan, traveling to the other side of the world to run from bad memories, and has lived in the city of Pittsburgh for fifteen years. A Storm of Blossoms is primarily set in Pittsburgh, though there are plenty of other places that show up as well.
Kyoko lives in a world not so different from our own, except that many things which for us are just myths and legends are for her very much real. Creatures out of folklore stay out of the public eye, but they exert an influence on the mortal world all the same. As the daughter of a human and a raiju (a creature from Japanese folklore associated with storms), Kyoko has had a challenging life, made worse by her tendency to attract bizarre complications and get herself in trouble.
The story is written entirely in first-person limited perspective. What this means is that the narration is all from Kyoko’s own perspective, and reflects her own beliefs, perceptions, and interpretations. This is, at least, true for the main books, and you can get the basic story with just those books; but there are also interlude chapters spaced out which show other parts of the world, and other perspectives on events, which make the story more complete. There are also documents that would exist within the world, similarly spaced out through the story, as well as extensive out-of-universe notes and discussion on this site. You can engage with as much or as little of this broader context as you like.
A Storm of Blossoms draws on the real world for inspiration heavily; myth and folklore are a major element, and I look to real places and events for inspiration as well. All of these things are used fictitiously, though, and not intended to actually represent the real world. I have attempted to be respectful to source cultures in how I have drawn on them, but that has to be balanced against the need to create a cohesive setting and narrative, and this is ultimately a work of fiction.
The content of A Storm of Blossoms is pretty dark in places, and if you’re looking to avoid triggering material this may be a hard story for you to engage with. Kyoko’s world is not a kind one. The monsters are in charge of things, and the people fighting them are often even worse. Bad things happen to good people on a regular basis. There is graphic violence, and while sex is not explicitly described, this is mostly because I don’t feel it adds enough to the story to be worth writing it out on-screen. It does feature in the story’s content and themes. All of these things are used for thematic and narrative reasons rather than for the sake of grotesquerie or shock value, but ultimately this is not a lighthearted story about heroes defeating villains. A Storm of Blossoms is about the places in between, about liminal spaces and uncertain ethics and finding beauty within the darkness. It is the story of one person’s attempts to navigate a complex world, and how her life unfolds. If that sounds interesting, the story opens here.