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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
A fitting conclusion that makes you want more. This was one of those books that you don't want to see the end of!
Derde en afsluitende deel van een fijne trilogie.
Elk deel heeft zo zijn eigen focus, en alhoewel alle delen samen een verhaal vertellen worden met dit deel niet alle gaten gevuld die (met name in het eerste deel) nog open waren. Dit keer ligt veel focus bij een regiment van het Indiase leger dat wordt ingeschakeld om de dwarsliggende Chinezen (die pogingen doen om de opiumhandel stil te leggen) te verslaan.
"You vile chute-looter of a luckerbaug!"
Wederom staat het boek vol met Indiaas en Chinees slang/pidgin, waar het grootste deel niet in de Kindle-woordenboeken is terug te vinden, maar vaak is toch vrij duidelijk wat er bedoeld wordt :-)
Misschien een halve ster er af omdat het grootste gat in het verhaal (wat er na afloop van deel 1 op Mauritius allemaal nog gebeurt) nooit wordt afgehecht, en dat toch wel nieuwsgierig maakte...
Elk deel heeft zo zijn eigen focus, en alhoewel alle delen samen een verhaal vertellen worden met dit deel niet alle gaten gevuld die (met name in het eerste deel) nog open waren. Dit keer ligt veel focus bij een regiment van het Indiase leger dat wordt ingeschakeld om de dwarsliggende Chinezen (die pogingen doen om de opiumhandel stil te leggen) te verslaan.
"You vile chute-looter of a luckerbaug!"
Wederom staat het boek vol met Indiaas en Chinees slang/pidgin, waar het grootste deel niet in de Kindle-woordenboeken is terug te vinden, maar vaak is toch vrij duidelijk wat er bedoeld wordt :-)
Misschien een halve ster er af omdat het grootste gat in het verhaal (wat er na afloop van deel 1 op Mauritius allemaal nog gebeurt) nooit wordt afgehecht, en dat toch wel nieuwsgierig maakte...
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Such an incredible trilogy. Was sad to say goodbye to the characters. There were some incredibly memorable ones.
adventurous
slow-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:
Yes
Flood of Fire is not only as beautifully written, extraordinarily well-researched, and detail-rich as the first two books of the Ibis series, but brings immense satisfaction as Ghosh successfully ties together numerous character paths and plot strands (both old and new) all back together in as fantastic a conclusion as I could have possibly hoped for. My only complaint is that I will most likely become somewhat irritating to friends and family due to my inevitable incessant recommendation of this trilogy going forward from here any time someone too close to me decides to let it be known that they're looking for something new to read.
I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while, so I finally picked it up and started reading.
Then I put it down.
And argued with myself.
I can’t remember everyone and everything from the first two books. The Burnhams, Zachary Reid, Ah Neel, Baboo Nob Kissin! I remember the names, but not what had happened.
As the threads start, Zachary Reid back at the Burnhams, Shireen learning about the death of her husband and the return of Zadig Bey, Ah Neel’s new life with the Chinese, and Kesri Singh’s life in the army, the names washed over me and away again. I knew them, Bhyro Singh, he was killed on the Ibis apparently, think I remember that. I looked back at my reviews. My review for Sea of Poppies was pitiful, River of Smoke was a bit better, but not enough to fill in the gaps.
Should I carry on reading, or go back and re-read the other two first?
In the end I continued, I had sunk into enough of Ghosh’s delicious prose to not want to resurface.
Once again as the story shifts between China and the Sub-continent Ghosh paints a lush picture with words, half of which make no sense to me but I still love reading. From Army life for Kesri, to Shireen’s entrance to widowhood and Ah Neel’s life in secretive China, revealed in journal entries, as if, like the British, we are not allowed to venture into Chinese territory.
Here comes a bit of a spoiler. What I don’t remember from the first books is the sense of inevitability that seemed to be in Flood of Fire. While reminiscing the back story of Captain Mee, I wondered if his passionate love was in fact Mrs Burnham. While reminiscing later she reveals it was, and their paths are then set to meet in China. While the outcome could go any which way, I still don’t remember the signposts being so clear in the previous two. But that is a minor niggle. As I progressed still more names came out of the mist, Serang Ali, Freddie Lee, Kuar that were all interrelated, all entwined to the Ibis, a constant yet silent character in the background of the whole series.
All paths lead to Canton and Hong Kong in this final instalment. As the Chinese try to end their addiction to opium the English merchants are whining about their loss of money and sure enough England brings it’s navy to the fore to force the Chinese to resume trading. The characters on the sub continent are slowly drawn across as the English start offensive and the characters are again intertwined. At one point Paulette and Freddie recognise Kuar during a military display, which was a nice touch, as the characters flow around one another but do not always connect. At various points the temptation of opium is always there, and by this time you are hoping the characters stay away from it, knowing the impact it has on the lives of those who taste it.
It’s difficult to comment much on the story, given how I have forgotten the previous two books. I didn’t like Zachary by the end of the book, although I imagine at that time there were many like him. His transformation throughout the series is perhaps most truthful, which is a shame, he feels no remorse for the outcome of his actions, and seemingly comes out of it much richer. Of course, Baboo Nob Kissin was always a joy to read, although his role in this was much reduced. Kesri seems the moral mast of the novel, whether the honest soldier from the subcontinent was a deliberate juxtaposition to the greed driven english merchants or just how the character developed only Ghosh can answer.
It is Ghosh’s attention to detail, vibrant description of protocol and every day life that makes this series a geniune pleasure to read, if he narrated a hundred years like this you would live and enjoy every minute. For my own part, as much as I loved this, I know I would of enjoyed it even more if I had re-read Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke first, but the fact that I still couldn’t put it down after starting is it’s own compliment to Ghosh.
As the Ibis steals out of Hong Kong at the end, onto it’s next adventure, you wish you were stowed away on board to live it as you have lived this trilogy.
(blog review here)
Then I put it down.
And argued with myself.
I can’t remember everyone and everything from the first two books. The Burnhams, Zachary Reid, Ah Neel, Baboo Nob Kissin! I remember the names, but not what had happened.
As the threads start, Zachary Reid back at the Burnhams, Shireen learning about the death of her husband and the return of Zadig Bey, Ah Neel’s new life with the Chinese, and Kesri Singh’s life in the army, the names washed over me and away again. I knew them, Bhyro Singh, he was killed on the Ibis apparently, think I remember that. I looked back at my reviews. My review for Sea of Poppies was pitiful, River of Smoke was a bit better, but not enough to fill in the gaps.
Should I carry on reading, or go back and re-read the other two first?
In the end I continued, I had sunk into enough of Ghosh’s delicious prose to not want to resurface.
Once again as the story shifts between China and the Sub-continent Ghosh paints a lush picture with words, half of which make no sense to me but I still love reading. From Army life for Kesri, to Shireen’s entrance to widowhood and Ah Neel’s life in secretive China, revealed in journal entries, as if, like the British, we are not allowed to venture into Chinese territory.
Here comes a bit of a spoiler. What I don’t remember from the first books is the sense of inevitability that seemed to be in Flood of Fire. While reminiscing the back story of Captain Mee, I wondered if his passionate love was in fact Mrs Burnham. While reminiscing later she reveals it was, and their paths are then set to meet in China. While the outcome could go any which way, I still don’t remember the signposts being so clear in the previous two. But that is a minor niggle. As I progressed still more names came out of the mist, Serang Ali, Freddie Lee, Kuar that were all interrelated, all entwined to the Ibis, a constant yet silent character in the background of the whole series.
All paths lead to Canton and Hong Kong in this final instalment. As the Chinese try to end their addiction to opium the English merchants are whining about their loss of money and sure enough England brings it’s navy to the fore to force the Chinese to resume trading. The characters on the sub continent are slowly drawn across as the English start offensive and the characters are again intertwined. At one point Paulette and Freddie recognise Kuar during a military display, which was a nice touch, as the characters flow around one another but do not always connect. At various points the temptation of opium is always there, and by this time you are hoping the characters stay away from it, knowing the impact it has on the lives of those who taste it.
It’s difficult to comment much on the story, given how I have forgotten the previous two books. I didn’t like Zachary by the end of the book, although I imagine at that time there were many like him. His transformation throughout the series is perhaps most truthful, which is a shame, he feels no remorse for the outcome of his actions, and seemingly comes out of it much richer. Of course, Baboo Nob Kissin was always a joy to read, although his role in this was much reduced. Kesri seems the moral mast of the novel, whether the honest soldier from the subcontinent was a deliberate juxtaposition to the greed driven english merchants or just how the character developed only Ghosh can answer.
It is Ghosh’s attention to detail, vibrant description of protocol and every day life that makes this series a geniune pleasure to read, if he narrated a hundred years like this you would live and enjoy every minute. For my own part, as much as I loved this, I know I would of enjoyed it even more if I had re-read Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke first, but the fact that I still couldn’t put it down after starting is it’s own compliment to Ghosh.
As the Ibis steals out of Hong Kong at the end, onto it’s next adventure, you wish you were stowed away on board to live it as you have lived this trilogy.
(blog review here)
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I loved the first so books of the trilogy. This one was still informative and interesting, but too long and melodramatic.
2.5/5
Amitav Ghosh began The Ibis Trilogy on one note and ended it on quite another. Had I confined myself entirely to one or the other, I would have likely liked this concluding piece a great deal more, or at least not have spent it so distracted by musings on what could have been based on the volumes, especially the first, that had preceded it. For this is not only a novel of history, but also one of war, and unlike the inane bombasticisms that I've recently had the misfortune to run a fortunately short gauntlet of, this is a piece that doesn't mince words about the avarice, cruelty, lies, and divide and conquer methodologies that shape our world today as much as it did nearly two centuries before. All that is exactly to my liking, ideologically speaking, but these days, I also expect the narrative to carry its message on some sort of holistic level, whether it be a masterfully deft balance of character in plot or a riotously glorious plunge in all sorts of experimentations aimed at seducing the reader down to the depths where the differences between fiction and reality are not so severe after all. This final conclusion of the trilogy certainly maintains its linguistic pushing of the envelope, but in the manner of it being yet another holdover from the first volume that is largely incapable of competing with the new focus on troop movements, naval descriptions, and everything else tied up in giving a play by play of that time when England foisted itself as the ultimate drug pimp onto a corner of the world known as China. Couple that with some rather weak character handling and a bit too much hindsight moralizing and you have an ending that was hardly satisfying, but not so much that I would be willing to read even more of it in hopes of feeling otherwise.
When it comes to reading, I'm not the type that tends to get the most out of the characters and whatever sorts of quirks and debacles and evolutions end up in their own personal miserable pile of secrets and solutions. Nor do I usually care for the quality of whatever succession of events or frequency of plot holes builds up as the pages pass me by, having too often sniffed out twists and turns, sudden tragedies and climactic reveals, a good fifty pages or so before due to how repetitively such things reveal themselves across the media board. So, part of why [b:Sea of Poppies|1330324|Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)|Amitav Ghosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327376395l/1330324._SY75_.jpg|1319808] endeared me so was the fact that, however it came to be, I found myself actually caring and, more importantly, enjoying being able to care about all that customarily humdrum frippery used to encase the capital M meaning that I'm constantly digging for. It was enough to not only commit me to finishing the entirety of the series, a rare occurrence in my record of devotion that is extraordinarily keen on finishing any individual work and more than flippant about any accompanying sequels and prequels, but also to spacing out the works to extend my enjoyment that much further. The endeavor begun so brilliantly in 2019 is now finished in 2021, and while a number of characters and plotlines from the beginning entry were wrapped up in the finale, the caveats that had begun rearing their hydra heads in the middle child of [b:River of Smoke|9783627|River of Smoke|Amitav Ghosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1310286525l/9783627._SY75_.jpg|14673463] also carried over: namely, the cast and plot threads multiplied so much that the ones who lived became extremely flat and/or cogwheel within the larger plot, while the ones who died did so with barely a murmur. Once again, it was nice to get a better scope on that AP History footnote topic known as the "Opium Wars", but it takes a certain amount of self control when it comes to handing out nonfictional tidbits whilst keeping the fiction all together, and even six hundred pages didn't give Ghosh enough room to decide what he really wanted to do with it all: deliver a lesson, or tell a story.
I'm glad that this series has come to an end, as I'd have a hard time looking forward to returning to another installment next year. This conclusion, as a whole, was more satisfying to me than its middling predecessor, but it would have been even more satisfying if the author had foreseen more of what he wanted to do with the series as a whole and used that to draw a more consistent thread throughout the entirety. Considering how long each entry is already, I imagine that would have compromised some of what I most enjoyed in the series' starting work, but it also would have meant that fewer of the characters, if any, would have felt like a stock prop in joke during the trilogy's end, taking on character traits and hyper speed villain/hero arcs simply to progress the plot along in dramatic manner or provide a supposedly acceptable amount of closure. So, while I'm rather keen on the idea of reading more about the Opium Wars, I'm more interested in some quality nonfiction than anything that tries to simultaneously swallow down a narrative amidst its factchecking. Looking over Ghosh's other works, it seems most of it consists of single, self-contained narratives and nonfictions that are each, for the most part, shorter in length than a single entry in this series, so I wouldn't mind returning to his work at some point, especially if there was some guarantee of him having tighter control over his writing ambitions. 'Kill your darlings' has certainly become a tool that has been wielded in a gross and lazy fashion of late whenever a show is faced with the conundrum of perhaps letting their immortal white boy die instead of the single BIPoC who undertook their mantle from a series of predecessors who have each undertaken their unique role of Tragic Death of the Season each preceding year, but sometimes, there really is a need for it. Authors can go on for as long as they like, but if I find that their writing has less holistic coherency than, say, all 2200+ pages of [b:Three Kingdoms|158770|Three Kingdoms (4-Volume Boxed Set)|Luo Guanzhong|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519909801l/158770._SY75_.jpg|72711304], they really need to sit down and ask themselves what exactly they're trying to do in the long run, and whether the end is going to fulfill the promises of the beginning.
Amitav Ghosh began The Ibis Trilogy on one note and ended it on quite another. Had I confined myself entirely to one or the other, I would have likely liked this concluding piece a great deal more, or at least not have spent it so distracted by musings on what could have been based on the volumes, especially the first, that had preceded it. For this is not only a novel of history, but also one of war, and unlike the inane bombasticisms that I've recently had the misfortune to run a fortunately short gauntlet of, this is a piece that doesn't mince words about the avarice, cruelty, lies, and divide and conquer methodologies that shape our world today as much as it did nearly two centuries before. All that is exactly to my liking, ideologically speaking, but these days, I also expect the narrative to carry its message on some sort of holistic level, whether it be a masterfully deft balance of character in plot or a riotously glorious plunge in all sorts of experimentations aimed at seducing the reader down to the depths where the differences between fiction and reality are not so severe after all. This final conclusion of the trilogy certainly maintains its linguistic pushing of the envelope, but in the manner of it being yet another holdover from the first volume that is largely incapable of competing with the new focus on troop movements, naval descriptions, and everything else tied up in giving a play by play of that time when England foisted itself as the ultimate drug pimp onto a corner of the world known as China. Couple that with some rather weak character handling and a bit too much hindsight moralizing and you have an ending that was hardly satisfying, but not so much that I would be willing to read even more of it in hopes of feeling otherwise.
When it comes to reading, I'm not the type that tends to get the most out of the characters and whatever sorts of quirks and debacles and evolutions end up in their own personal miserable pile of secrets and solutions. Nor do I usually care for the quality of whatever succession of events or frequency of plot holes builds up as the pages pass me by, having too often sniffed out twists and turns, sudden tragedies and climactic reveals, a good fifty pages or so before due to how repetitively such things reveal themselves across the media board. So, part of why [b:Sea of Poppies|1330324|Sea of Poppies (Ibis Trilogy, #1)|Amitav Ghosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327376395l/1330324._SY75_.jpg|1319808] endeared me so was the fact that, however it came to be, I found myself actually caring and, more importantly, enjoying being able to care about all that customarily humdrum frippery used to encase the capital M meaning that I'm constantly digging for. It was enough to not only commit me to finishing the entirety of the series, a rare occurrence in my record of devotion that is extraordinarily keen on finishing any individual work and more than flippant about any accompanying sequels and prequels, but also to spacing out the works to extend my enjoyment that much further. The endeavor begun so brilliantly in 2019 is now finished in 2021, and while a number of characters and plotlines from the beginning entry were wrapped up in the finale, the caveats that had begun rearing their hydra heads in the middle child of [b:River of Smoke|9783627|River of Smoke|Amitav Ghosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1310286525l/9783627._SY75_.jpg|14673463] also carried over: namely, the cast and plot threads multiplied so much that the ones who lived became extremely flat and/or cogwheel within the larger plot, while the ones who died did so with barely a murmur. Once again, it was nice to get a better scope on that AP History footnote topic known as the "Opium Wars", but it takes a certain amount of self control when it comes to handing out nonfictional tidbits whilst keeping the fiction all together, and even six hundred pages didn't give Ghosh enough room to decide what he really wanted to do with it all: deliver a lesson, or tell a story.
I'm glad that this series has come to an end, as I'd have a hard time looking forward to returning to another installment next year. This conclusion, as a whole, was more satisfying to me than its middling predecessor, but it would have been even more satisfying if the author had foreseen more of what he wanted to do with the series as a whole and used that to draw a more consistent thread throughout the entirety. Considering how long each entry is already, I imagine that would have compromised some of what I most enjoyed in the series' starting work, but it also would have meant that fewer of the characters, if any, would have felt like a stock prop in joke during the trilogy's end, taking on character traits and hyper speed villain/hero arcs simply to progress the plot along in dramatic manner or provide a supposedly acceptable amount of closure. So, while I'm rather keen on the idea of reading more about the Opium Wars, I'm more interested in some quality nonfiction than anything that tries to simultaneously swallow down a narrative amidst its factchecking. Looking over Ghosh's other works, it seems most of it consists of single, self-contained narratives and nonfictions that are each, for the most part, shorter in length than a single entry in this series, so I wouldn't mind returning to his work at some point, especially if there was some guarantee of him having tighter control over his writing ambitions. 'Kill your darlings' has certainly become a tool that has been wielded in a gross and lazy fashion of late whenever a show is faced with the conundrum of perhaps letting their immortal white boy die instead of the single BIPoC who undertook their mantle from a series of predecessors who have each undertaken their unique role of Tragic Death of the Season each preceding year, but sometimes, there really is a need for it. Authors can go on for as long as they like, but if I find that their writing has less holistic coherency than, say, all 2200+ pages of [b:Three Kingdoms|158770|Three Kingdoms (4-Volume Boxed Set)|Luo Guanzhong|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519909801l/158770._SY75_.jpg|72711304], they really need to sit down and ask themselves what exactly they're trying to do in the long run, and whether the end is going to fulfill the promises of the beginning.
The great scholars and functionaries took little interest in the world beyond until suddenly one day it rose up and devoured them.
This, according to me, is the weakest one in the Ibis trilogy. Although it portrays the history effectively, the fluidity of the story somewhat got lost. It felt disjointed.