Reviews

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

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steller0707's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

Loved re-reading this for my class on Oceans and Empire. Ghosh's re-imagination of the history of the indentured migrants in the form of an anti-colonial cosmopolitanism operating through the subversive space of the ship is such so cool!

dazuli's review

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adventurous informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

sducharme's review

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4.0

I really enjoyed this first book of the trilogy and will definitely continue - mostly because I felt like this volume introduced the characters and their backstories and it wasn't until quite late in the story that they all came together on the ship. A friend recommended listening to this as an audiobook, which I will try for the next ones. There's a lot of dialect and some words I wasn't familiar with, so I think I'll get more out of it while listening as well.

limccabe's review

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5.0

I am so impressed by Ghosh! The amount of research that went into writing this book is stupefying. The way he plays with language is incredible - he is the first author to make me so aware of dialogue. Each character has not only a distinctive voice and style, but even a unique language. I also like that he leaves the reader feeling educated, but not lectured at.

The major downside is that I prefer when trilogies are three separate stories with one arching plot to connect each book and this definitely didn't seem like that - it left off on a pretty cheesy cliff-hanger.

bodenleben's review

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adventurous informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

susanbrooks's review against another edition

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3.0

Opium addicts, sea voyages, romance...This is the first part of a trilogy and it felt that way - like a setup for future action. Many characters, many threads.
I had moments of lucidity about who/what/when.. trading off with confusion.

sharanyasarathy's review

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3.0

This book COULD have been amazing, but I thought that the fact that it took about half the book for the characters to even start meeting each other was a drag. I realize now that the set up was extremely detailed and fastidious because the novel is the first of a trilogy, but I was impatient with the characters' isolated orbits and was ready for the adventure to start. However, the adventure once they actually got on the ship never really piqued my interest to the point that it could have, and the book ended right as I thought it was going to start getting interesting.

On top of that, I didn't really love any of the characters, which made it hard for me to be sucked into the book. The addition of the sailor's incomprehensible language, in which large parts of dialogue are set, also detracted.

Amitav Ghosh is a fantastic writer, and the premise and setting were great, but this book just didn't deliver for me.