Tai-Pan: The Second Novel of the Asian Saga

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Not the crappiest crap I've ever seen, but really - if an author has to repeat the same "foreign-flavor" word 4 times on one page, he clearly doesn't have the most innovative of spirits. I was gonna go with Noble House but that one seems like it has a lot of shit having to do with finance, which I pretty much don’t understand a lot about.

We don’t see an equal representation with the Asian side of things as we do with ‘Shogun’ and the interplay with Toranaga (Historical name: Tokugawa) and other Japanese in dealing with the “foreign issue” What we get are snippets, then brought back to the British side of things, for example, we get Struan’s mistress, May-May and himself in conversations, or there are dealings with her bastard son through Struan, the secret Triad member, Gordon Chen, the only two “major” Chinese/Cantonese characters in the book. A great protagonist, one I was glad to follow through regardless of whether I actually liked him as a person or not.There are two major characters I want to talk about, although Clavell managed to create a fairly interesting and diverse cast of characters. Shogun was fantastic, mysterious, complex, cruel, violent, erotic, dressed with elaborate manners and rituals, alien thought patterns, ironclad honor, smelly Europeans, the whole works - but it didn't have the Struans versus the Brocks, which crackling, bloody, rollicking, cutthroat competitive maneuverings grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into this Southwest Pacific tale, hanging me on the yardarm so that I could marvel at the entirety of the colorful, frantic pageant unfolding before my young and excited eyes.

This was a very well plotted book that rarely sagged, and took a story about an era and event that frankly I'm not really that interested in reading about highly enjoyable. Several times throughout the book, he shows signs of having matured and being his father's son, hatching his own schemes and being in charge of his own destiny, however a few pages later he is the same insecure, naive child he was before. Not so much because there was any tension, but rather because I was curious to see what would happen before the end because I knew the book could not end in this state of paradise for the protagonist. I was very impressed with the depth of the plot, the deftness with which Clavell pulled me into the story, and the breadth and scope he was willing to manfully shoulder to bring these characters to life.And anyone who loves “larger-than-life, but still realistic and wonderfully developed” characters, should read it. As a result of this victory, the British take Hong Kong for themselves and Dirk seems poised to rise to even further heights of success. Ecco, ambientazione, personaggi e finale mi hanno fatto amare questo libro malgrado la storia fosse un po' debole. The man could tell a tale, and one with enough recognizable features enmeshed within the exotic and the historic to propel his literary vessel across roiling, tempestuous seas.

The book is about his struggle to maintain his pre-eminence amonst the China traders, establish his kith and kin to take over the dynasty after him and to turn Hong Kong from a small rocky island into the centre of Britain's Asian Policy. They cut off most of the romance stuff, and what romance there is, they've got a lot better chemistry and spend much less time just dully telling each other how much they're in love, or "pillowing", or talking about dildos.Schemes are enacted, others are discovered, moves and counter-moves, friends are enemies and enemies are friends, and sailing ships race across the South China Sea. The unusual thing here is that the protagonist already starts out as the undisputed "ruler" of Asia and the most powerful, intelligent, charismatic and wealthiest man in the book. Struan is tough on people, but that comes from the struggles he experienced reaching the top of the mountain.

So, in the end, rather than being a balance between Eastern and Western cultures, as an Asian saga might imply, it is more Asia as seen through Anglo-Saxon eyes.It is a wide ranging story about Western trade interests in China and the establishment of Hong Kong as a British colony. This works for the most part because, according to Clavell, foreigners were pretty much strictly forbidden from going anywhere other than those two places. So, with ‘Shogun‘, instead of William Adams, we have John Blackthorne and in place of Tokugawa we have Toranaga.