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A review by martyfried
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
5.0
It took a while, but I finally persevered and finished this series. It wasn't easy in many ways, but well worth the effort. In this 3rd book of the series, many people from previous books come together for the conclusion, where the some of them sail off into the sunset (hopefully, this won't be a spoiler).
It's hard for me to write a review of this series; anything I say will seem small compared to the power of the story, and the writing of a great author. The story was truly epic.
I learned a lot about the opium war (one of them, I suppose), and I'll have to say that the Chinese outlook made a lot more sense to me than that of the British, Indian, and American rationales. The poor viceroy, Lin, that was appointed to take care of the problem, thought it should be simple. After all, opium was illegal in Britain, and if the Chinese were to try to sell opium there, Britain would surely object, so why should the reverse not be true. But he underestimated the greed of the opium sellers, and the pride and hypocrisy of Britain - not to mention the effects of the trade imbalance between China and Britain. Britain was buying a lot of goods from China, and was forced to pay for them with silver, which they needed to purchase from other countries using gold. So opium was their solution; they used that to get back some of that imbalance.
I think Lin was an honorable man, and I feel bad that he ended up being treated so badly by both his own country and the foreigners. But the Chinese Emperor was far away, and got incorrect reports from his advisors, who were afraid to tell him the real truth, so I blame the emperor for the lack of a workable solution. Perhaps China was just too big for that period to deal effectively with something like this.
The difficult part of reading this is mostly the language used, which Ghosh tried to replicate without explaining; this was harder in the earlier books because after a while, I learned to just let it flow, and got the meanings out of context, or sometimes just didn't worry about not understanding it - much like in normal life, I think. Often, the idioms added spice and humor to the book.
In addition to the idiomatic language, keeping up with the sheer number of characters and their unfamiliar-sounding names made it a bit difficult. And some characters had more than one name.
It's hard for me to write a review of this series; anything I say will seem small compared to the power of the story, and the writing of a great author. The story was truly epic.
I learned a lot about the opium war (one of them, I suppose), and I'll have to say that the Chinese outlook made a lot more sense to me than that of the British, Indian, and American rationales. The poor viceroy, Lin, that was appointed to take care of the problem, thought it should be simple. After all, opium was illegal in Britain, and if the Chinese were to try to sell opium there, Britain would surely object, so why should the reverse not be true. But he underestimated the greed of the opium sellers, and the pride and hypocrisy of Britain - not to mention the effects of the trade imbalance between China and Britain. Britain was buying a lot of goods from China, and was forced to pay for them with silver, which they needed to purchase from other countries using gold. So opium was their solution; they used that to get back some of that imbalance.
I think Lin was an honorable man, and I feel bad that he ended up being treated so badly by both his own country and the foreigners. But the Chinese Emperor was far away, and got incorrect reports from his advisors, who were afraid to tell him the real truth, so I blame the emperor for the lack of a workable solution. Perhaps China was just too big for that period to deal effectively with something like this.
The difficult part of reading this is mostly the language used, which Ghosh tried to replicate without explaining; this was harder in the earlier books because after a while, I learned to just let it flow, and got the meanings out of context, or sometimes just didn't worry about not understanding it - much like in normal life, I think. Often, the idioms added spice and humor to the book.
In addition to the idiomatic language, keeping up with the sheer number of characters and their unfamiliar-sounding names made it a bit difficult. And some characters had more than one name.