Many years ago, when I first finished reading James Clavell’s historical epic Shōgun, I felt slightly puzzled. The novel had taken well over 1000 pages building to a civil war in feudal Japan between the wise Lord Toranaga and his ambitious rival Lord Ishido, and then it stopped right as the war was beginning, offering only the briefest of epilogues detailing what happened next? How was this good storytelling?, I wondered. Maybe there’s a sequel I don’t know about?