I've read and loved both Sh?gun and Tai-Pan, then I've read Gaijin and, despite having read it almost as avidly as the other two, I was very disappointed by it.
I never finished Gaijin, can't really judge, but, well, since I didn't finish it, obviously I didn't like it as much as Shogun or Tai-Pan, either.
Considering this, would you suggest me to read another book of the saga (King Rat would be the next-in-line following the narrative order, but I might decide not to follow it), or to read something else entirely?
I've read a good part - but again not all - of King Rat, and the two other books entirely. King Rat deals with Japanese interment camps in WW2, it seemed like a good enough book, but not having finished it, I can't really say if it lives up to Shogun and Tai-Pan.
Noble House is the story of a company - Struan's, the descendants of the guy from Tai-Pan - in the Hong Kong of the sixties, and almost entirely set within a week's time. I guess the best description would be a business thriller - the company is in very dire straits and the manager basically stakes everything on a spectacular plan to save his company from a hostile take-over (by, you guessed it, the descendants of the original Struan's rival). And then some politics and espionage thrown in. Personally, I loved it, probably my favourite book in the whole series (and one I really need to re-read).
And then there's Whirlwind, the story of a group of foreign helicopter pilots in Iran in 1979, and how they try to escape the country, with all the complications that ensue. Gripping stuff, if not exactly Clavell's strongest work. For some reason parts of the book have been released separately as "Escape: The Love Story from Whirlwind", but I see no reason why you'd want to read that when you can read the complete thing.
Clavell's asian saga
- 17/04/2011 08:50:05 PM
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Noble House is a great book.
- 17/04/2011 09:35:44 PM
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