Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe is a book about a ninja who fights robots in space.

I really enjoyed this book. It has its faults; the editing in my copy is terrible (”robot” is once pluralised with an apostrophe-s, and there is a comma that renders the sentence it is in total gibberish) and the main character, with his fencing prowess and super spy skills, is something of a Gary-Stu. (His name is even George’s middle name.) Nevertheless, it’s interesting, somewhat educational, and well-written. The characters are appealing, the plot is well-handled, and the ninja part is presented well. Plus, when all’s said and done, it’s about space ninja fighting robots. I recommend reading it.

Thorough summary: (SPOILER WARNING!)

As a ninja, Hosato has two identities (relevant to the book, anyway; he appears to have at least one other not used.) He is Hayama, professional duelist and basically upright man, and he is Hosato the spy and general criminal. The story begins when Hosato is hired to sabotage a major robot manufacturing company called McCrae Enterprises. He sets out to infiltrate the company with help from his specially-built robot Suzi.

As Hayama, he gets a job tutoring James, son of McCrae executive Harry Turner, in fencing. In this role, he moves into the plant and begins to look for ways to perform his sabotage mission. What he learns looks pretty discouraging: security is tight, maintenance and repairs efficient. Furthermore, both his pupil and the paranoid security chief Sasha have already become suspicious of him.

Meanwhile, Harry Turner is devising a scheme to replace the human security guards with robots. The problem is that robots are programmed not to harm humans. When Hosato sneaks into a restricted area and spies on the robot construction, he discovers that Turner has changed this programming. Shortly after this, Turner is murdered by one of his own robots.

The robots proceed to slaughter every human in the plant. Hosato manages to escape, accompanied by James, Sasha, Suzi, and a McCrae’s employee named Rick. After a failed attempt to gain help from the company that hired Hosato to sabotage McCrae in the beginning, they take refuge with a criminal mastermind of Hosato’s acquaintance. During their journey, Suzi is lost and presumed destroyed.

They realise that the robots, on the basis of some programming so faulty that it’s hard to feel sorry for Turner, will try to destroy the human race unless they are reprogrammed. They therefore return to McCrae. As Hosato sneaks into the building, he is met by Suzi, who has not only survived but has also been reprogrammed. She promptly challenges him to a duel, which he wins cleverly in a way I shall not describe.

The reprogramming is complete, and one would think that this would point to a happy ending. However, there’s one event that prevents that: Hosato, believing death is at hand, tells James and Sasha that he is a ninja. He later, when trying to decide what to do, tells the head of his clan about this. He asks permission to “sponsor them into the clan” but is refused because he is only permitted to do that for one person and should only have told one person. He is therefore ordered to kill one of them. His chance comes, but he is in love with Sasha and very fond of James, so he leaves them both alive. The book, therefore, ends with his quiet speculation about which of his relatives will be sent to solve the matter by killing him.

In conclusion: good book. It would be better if it had a sequel, though.