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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
I'd rate this a 2.5 which I have rounded up to a 3.
Sea of Poppies is a period piece and it gave a good idea of the opium trade back in the colonial times. I did enjoy the sailing parts (as I am a sailor), but on the whole, the book didn't appeal to me.
In my opinion, this story could have been a whole lot shorter. I think that given the length of the book that the characters could have been better developed. There were too many characters for my liking, too.
I'm writing this brief review a month after reading the book and my memory of it is a blur. I can't even remember the ending, for goodness sake. Was there an ending, or was it left off in the hope that readers would proceed to the next book in the series?
Sea of Poppies is a period piece and it gave a good idea of the opium trade back in the colonial times. I did enjoy the sailing parts (as I am a sailor), but on the whole, the book didn't appeal to me.
In my opinion, this story could have been a whole lot shorter. I think that given the length of the book that the characters could have been better developed. There were too many characters for my liking, too.
I'm writing this brief review a month after reading the book and my memory of it is a blur. I can't even remember the ending, for goodness sake. Was there an ending, or was it left off in the hope that readers would proceed to the next book in the series?
Tried and failed in December 2010.
Tried and failed again, March 2012. I keep thinking I'm just not in the right frame of mind for the challenge of this book.
Tried and failed again, March 2012. I keep thinking I'm just not in the right frame of mind for the challenge of this book.
I tried, and I couldn't. This wasn't like Book or some of the other books that I've abandoned because they were shitty, but I could not get my brain around this book or into it. I found myself flipping pages because it was the appropriate time to do so, making what you could laughingly call "progress" and then wondering what the hell had happened and who everyone was. Then I'd pick it back up a few hours later even more lost than before, and the cycle would repeat.
There are a bunch of reasons that have nothing to do with quality that I couldn't do this book:
— I'm not great with phoneticized pidgin languages (is there a better term for this??) - not because I don't like learning about them but because they take up my entire brain just trying to sound them out that I can't actually parse what's being said.
— I personally don't like the withholding-from-the-reader model of suspense especially when it's not a suspense novel and it's such a dense book that's stuffed with enough that I forgot about Deeti's shrine until it came up again... but again, I know there are people who don't mind that.
— This book (like Wolf Hall) felt like it was written for history buffs, but as someone who doesn't know a whole lot about history I felt completely adrift (no pun intended), unable to contextualize even places without constantly pulling out my phone to look stuff up - the last thing I needed was to be pulled further out of this book.
— It's the first in a trilogy, and I felt the weight of feeling this confused for two. more. books. the whole time - and I figured if I was dreading the next two books after 100 pages it wasn't worth finishing in the first place.
All this to say this book is likely well-deserving of the Booker Prize shortlist (the winners of which I do tend to blow hot and cold on), but I hit my 100 page mark and did what I rarely do with books, and gave up.
There are a bunch of reasons that have nothing to do with quality that I couldn't do this book:
— I'm not great with phoneticized pidgin languages (is there a better term for this??) - not because I don't like learning about them but because they take up my entire brain just trying to sound them out that I can't actually parse what's being said.
— I personally don't like the withholding-from-the-reader model of suspense especially when it's not a suspense novel and it's such a dense book that's stuffed with enough that I forgot about Deeti's shrine until it came up again... but again, I know there are people who don't mind that.
— This book (like Wolf Hall) felt like it was written for history buffs, but as someone who doesn't know a whole lot about history I felt completely adrift (no pun intended), unable to contextualize even places without constantly pulling out my phone to look stuff up - the last thing I needed was to be pulled further out of this book.
— It's the first in a trilogy, and I felt the weight of feeling this confused for two. more. books. the whole time - and I figured if I was dreading the next two books after 100 pages it wasn't worth finishing in the first place.
All this to say this book is likely well-deserving of the Booker Prize shortlist (the winners of which I do tend to blow hot and cold on), but I hit my 100 page mark and did what I rarely do with books, and gave up.
Quite an interesting read..looking forward for next part
FANTASTIC - really rich atmosphere and characters. Can't wait to read the sequel. Beautiful writing, adventurous and full of depth.
First read this in December, 2008, according to Goodreads. I just re-read it in preparation to read the second and third books in the trilogy, which I've had on my shelf for far too long. There is something wonderful about re-reading a book that you've read before - it felt familiar but given how much time had passed since I first read it, fresh too. The review below stands. I cannot wait to see what happens next.
Original Review: I had read The Glass Palace a while back and as part of my effort to read all Booker nominated books read this recently. Ghosh is excellent at character creation and development and while the book is a little fanciful, it was a great read and I was really disappointed when it ended. Then I heard that it was the first in a proposed trilogy, which made me really happy :)
Original Review: I had read The Glass Palace a while back and as part of my effort to read all Booker nominated books read this recently. Ghosh is excellent at character creation and development and while the book is a little fanciful, it was a great read and I was really disappointed when it ended. Then I heard that it was the first in a proposed trilogy, which made me really happy :)
The beginning of this book took me in with its portrayal of India's opium trade in the 1930's, but something just wasn't there to sustain my interest. In some chapters, especially early in the book, the language is incredibly vivid. As the book goes on, though, all the detail gets sunk into the Ibis, which wasn't as interesting as the opium fields. And the dialog was extremely awkward. It's clear that Ghosh is using the difference in language to highlight the various backgrounds of the characters, but it pulled me out of the moment--especially the pirate voices.
The first in a trilogy, the ending probably won't feel so abrupt with a second book waiting on the nightstand, but I would have liked to at least have understood what Deeti was feeling watching the longboat head into the ocean...
The first in a trilogy, the ending probably won't feel so abrupt with a second book waiting on the nightstand, but I would have liked to at least have understood what Deeti was feeling watching the longboat head into the ocean...
And this is how you write a historical fiction.
