Rating: 
Summary: Not bad...but not good, either.
Review: After exhausting all the European countries for characters and storylines, Danielle Steel chose to write about a Japanese girl. She gives her story an interesting setting: Delicate, waiflike, DS character comes to the States from Japan to live with her Very American cousins. Culture shock is experienced on both ends, but she adjusts well (because she is a DS character - no flaws allowed!). Of course, there is romance - with a white boy, no less! - and then there's that pesky war. After the Day That Will Live in Infamy, the girl and her family are placed in an internment camp where romance proves more difficult and the family reacts in various stereotypes to the war and their current situation.I'm not a huge advocate for "Write what you know from your own personal experience and nothing else," but in so many ways, this book reminded me of something an eighth grader would have written for a history class assignment: "Write a story about the Japanese in America in WWII." In many respects, "Silent Honor" features some interesting tidbits about Japanese culture and history (but I'd check them against an encyclopedia before I went around touting them as facts) and gives the reader a good flavor of the times, but it flaunts its research a little too much while still remaining offensively distant from the topic, and in the end, this proves slightly more irritating than the story is entertaining. Not quite only for Danielle Diehards, but only after the casual fan has read the earlier stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad...but not good, either.
Review: After exhausting all the European countries for characters and storylines, Danielle Steel chose to write about a Japanese girl. She gives her story an interesting setting: Delicate, waiflike, DS character comes to the States from Japan to live with her Very American cousins. Culture shock is experienced on both ends, but she adjusts well (because she is a DS character - no flaws allowed!). Of course, there is romance - with a white boy, no less! - and then there's that pesky war. After the Day That Will Live in Infamy, the girl and her family are placed in an internment camp where romance proves more difficult and the family reacts in various stereotypes to the war and their current situation. I'm not a huge advocate for "Write what you know from your own personal experience and nothing else," but in so many ways, this book reminded me of something an eighth grader would have written for a history class assignment: "Write a story about the Japanese in America in WWII." In many respects, "Silent Honor" features some interesting tidbits about Japanese culture and history (but I'd check them against an encyclopedia before I went around touting them as facts) and gives the reader a good flavor of the times, but it flaunts its research a little too much while still remaining offensively distant from the topic, and in the end, this proves slightly more irritating than the story is entertaining. Not quite only for Danielle Diehards, but only after the casual fan has read the earlier stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: A nice introduction to America's "hidden" history
Review: Although I agree with the other individuals that have reviewed this book (that many parts seemed very unfeasible) overall it was an excellent introduction to American History. Having been entirely educated in the American school system - we barely glazed over the US treatment of Japanese during the war. I had no idea until I read this book the extent of the mistreatment and injustice that Japanese immigrants and citizens of Japanese decent were subject to during the war. As a story, this book is fabulous, as a tool for education it is a start. Today's youth will pick this up out of interest and they will learn something new. Of course if they want more accurate facts they will have to try the dryer literary works in the history section!! But, at least they will learn a little more about where our country has been and what we have done to our own citizens.
Rating: 
Summary: Silent Honor
Review: Another great book by Danielle Steel...I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction, or just wants to read a good book. The book was written in such a way that you could almost imagine being there, so if you are looking for a good book to read, try this one, but don't forget a box a tissues, you might need more than a couple...
Rating:
Summary: This book gave me a whole new persepctive on World War II.
Review: As is the case in all other Danielle Steel books, I finished reading this in a day. Poignantly written story that introduced me to the Japanese culture, with all its beauty. A very different novel from all her others but just as beautifully written. I look forward to a future film!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Brought to light how Americans treated Japanese Americans during WWII. Treatment was unfair and cruel
Rating:
Summary: Well-researched page turner
Review: Having been more fond of Danielle Steele's historical fiction, this book did not disappoint. Her thoroughness of subject matter always surprises me. The Japanese-American experience during WWII is an often overlooked one, especially in fiction. A sad, but smooth read.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing - Steele's other books are better.
Review: Having read a few of Danielle Steele's other books and been impressed, and having a deep interest in Japan and the Japanese culture, I was looking forward to a good read when I borrowed "Silent Honor" from my mother. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't pay money for it. While Steele the novelist is up to her usual pacing and the few bits of historical background she throws in are accurate (if unsatisfyingly meager), she seems to have taken her views of Japan straight from central casting. Granted, Hiroko is supposed to be a "typical" Japanese woman, but let's get real. Nothing, no personal detail, gives her any kind of quirk or individuality that the reader can latch onto. Furthermore, Steele often gets the Japanese language wrong and some of the situations and actions in the book are just idiotic. Aside from the major behavioral and cultural inconsistencies pointed out by other Amazon reviewers, one detail that particularly irritated me was the number of kimonos that tiny, delicate, flower-like Hiroko is able to pull out of the "one small trunk" that she carries to America. (I counted six before giving up.) I noticed that readers who give the book a favorable review seem to fall into two camps: (1) non-native English speakers who undoubtedly liked the book because it's simply written and easy to understand, and (2) native readers who include comments like "a wonderful introduction to Japan and its mysteries". Well, the book's syntax is about at a sixth-grade level, the plot is surpassingly linear, and Steele knows only a little more about Japan than I do about Mesopotamian basket weaving. Any native English speaker who has any background concerning Japan will be able to finish the book only out of a sense of morbid fascination to see how awful the story will get. If you want a decent, non-scholarly account of the Japanese-American internment in California, go rent "Come See the Paradise". If you want to read an interesting and informative account of Japanese Americans by a western writer who actually knows something about the subject, read James Michner's "Hawaii". And if you want to learn something about Japan, do anything but form your opinions based on "Silent Honor". As a writer of enormous popularity and some critical stature, Steele has an obligation to do better than this. Let's hope that in the future she sticks to a culture she knows.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but so unreal
Review: I am a Japanese living in Kyoto, where the Japanese girl actually came from. I found this story to be entertaining but so unreal. First of all, a Japanese girl in the 40s will NEVER have premarital sex, let alone with a white man. Being pregnent out of wedlock is the most disgraceful anyone can ever imagine. Plus having a child of white man is unthinkable. I recall in the book, the Japanese girl's father spoke to his children in English. This is a bit silly too. Also at the end when she goes back to Japan to find her parents dead from an air-raid is very dissappointing. First of all, Kyoto was never air-raided because there are many ruins of Japan. Where her parents evacuated, Maizuru is in middle of nowhere, a one-horse town, so I can not imagine any reasons for Americans to air-raid there either. I don't think such thing happened. The fact that the girl returning to Japan with mixed blood son without father is ridiculous. However, this is, after all an entertainment book so I can accept it. But I truly wished her parents were still alive and Steel wrote the conclusion in another way. The family seemed to be very modern for that time and I was very interested in finding out how they resolved the problem. But like her other stories, she killed the characters and ended the book without any real settlement.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I couldn't put this book down. Danielle Steel has done it again! This book opened my eyes to how life was from the eyes and hearts of the Japaneese. Even though this book is fiction, I'm sure many will agree that the characters are very real
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