review by showhost Dec 2013
Apparently this is the second in the Ibis trilogy which I
was unaware of when I read it so I don’t know if it makes any difference to the
flow of the story if you read the first book (Sea of Poppies)
before this. I took it as a stand alone
book.
This book was given to me by my mother-in-law Jean Thomas,
she bought it then realized it wasn’t her ‘cup of tea’. You can’t read it quickly, it needs
concentration and at nearly 600 pages it takes a lot of that!
I found the book strange to start with & I didn’t know
if I was going to finish it. For the
first 25 pages I found myself re-reading back over a couple of sentences to get
my mind to understand what was written. By
page 30 it was starting to seep under my skin & I knew I would carry on
reading the book. But you need time
& quiet to digest – there are quite a few characters and the story jumps
around. The author grew up in Bangaldesh, India & Sri Lanka.
Quote from authors webpage: ‘In September 1838 a storm blows
up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of
convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta
to Mauritius,
is caught up in the whirlwind. When the seas settle, five men have disappeared
- two lascars, two convicts and one of the passengers. Did the same storm upend
the fortunes of those aboard the Anahita, an opium carrier heading
towards Canton?
And what fate befell those aboard the Redruth, a sturdy two-masted
brig heading East out of Cornwall?
Was it the storm that altered their course or were the destinies of these
passengers at the mercy of even more powerful forces?’unquote
It centre’s around the Opium trade from India to Canton
(china) in the 1800’s. The description
is complex, deep & informative. It
shows the arrogant hypocrisy of the British traders. How dare these barbarian Chinese Mandarins
tell them they can’t sell Opium – its free trade – we’re British and don’t care
if it violates their laws! Of course if
it were the other way around then of course they wouldn’t be able to trade in
Opium with Britain
as it’s illegal, how impertinent.
This was the days of the Great British Empire, when Britain ruled
the waves. British East India Company
& the American traders were making millions – the Chinese people were
becoming uselessly addicted and dying.
It’s the slow build up to the penultimate showdown, when the
traders were made to dispose of over 20,000 crates of balls of Opium, by the
river which eventually fed into the sea.
Along side of this we have the botanical element from Cornwall as they traded in the plants which went to
nurseries and Kew
Gardens. I didn’t quite get the need for the sections which
were narrated in letters from Robin Chinnery (illegitimate, mixed-race,
homosexual and fictional? son of George Chinnery, a real-life painter of South China scenes) to Paulette, one of the botanists.
There were very good characters in the story (the main one Bahram
the Opium trader from Bombay)and
the feel of the times and its people were well portrayed, it’s a story told
from the opposite side presenting a different view. It did lose me for a while somewhere in the
middle of the book, I think the story lost its thread a little but I picked it
up again.
Of course the embargo didn’t last as the British &
French gun boats arrived The first Opium War ensued & the trade opened up
again – which I imagine is in the third book.
I found the book interesting and enjoyable
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