A forewarning though- you really have to get past the pidgin and broken language, because some of the conversations will drive you nuts if you don't. It is the early 19th century, when European traders and adventurers first began to penetrate the forbidding Chinese mainland.

Clavell was also an ardent supporter of Free Trade, an avowed opponent of Communism and Fascism and an admirer of certain aspects of both Asian and Western culture. The most irritating thing about the book is Clavell’s Chinese character’s sense of diction, accent, and manner of speech. I'll admit that the first 100 pages or so are difficult to get into, as the author flits from one new character to the next, explaining their backgrounds before getting on with the storytelling.Their occasional forays into intrigue are ultimately motivated by their desire to protect their families and help their men. I also loved his clever, funny, ultra-sweetheart mistress May-May and loved hating cruelly violent psycho nemesis Brock. A friend on Twitter said that they’d always imagined this book was about an enormous snake, given the title. There is no big quest, no life-threatening challenge that is to be overcome, only this series of problems that are fixed as soon as they arise.

Just keep reminding yourself when the book was written and that it was written by an adult male who had made his living writing for Hollywood. I was very impressed with the depth of the plot, the deftness with which Clavell pulled me into the story, and the breadth and scope he was willing to manfully shoulder to bring these characters to life. One absolutely brilliant book, but I didn't expect this ending, something similar yes, but the way it ended - NO!He has made his own joss by being smarter, more ruthless, accumulating more wealth, and being stronger than his opponents. Next up is Gai-Jin, kind of oddly his last book and one that a lot of people seem to think was kinda boring.

All the cunning and strategies involved in maintaining the largest trading company of the time, all the bitterness and rivalries experienced, all of it was astonishing to the senses. The thing I suppose I needed most this year was a balls-out story of daring, legal piracy and hard-nosed colonialism in the service of personal riches and furthering the drug trade. Però l'ambientazione e l'epoca sono interessantissime (come gli inglesi si credano superiori a tutti, al pari degli americani e dei russi, o degli stessi cinesi che seguono le loro tradizioni commiserando i barbari incivili che pensano di poter cambiare qualcosa o ottenere qualcosa di duraturo coi loro comportamenti). There have been grain riots, tax riots, draft riots, religious riots, but no one wants to see a British TEA riot, by God!I feel that it got a little bit messier, maybe, and a couple things got dropped entirely or never received an altogether satisfying conclusion, but it never tangled that bad. He has a wife who hounds him from one whorehouse to the next as he tries to stay one step ahead of her iron grip.

Before joining Goodreads, I had already read ‘Shogun’, so you, my friendly reader, do not have the luxury of a review of that as comparison, but I believe that what I say about ‘Tai-Pan’, set in Hong Kong, can easily be said of it’s predecessor. He is unpredictable, but only seemingly so, because he gauges every situation by much more than just what is before him. As she is Struan’s mistress, picking up on Struan’s Scottish dialectical and phonetic nuances are understandable. What gives this book a plus, aside from the historical problems is that it is a decent drama and adventure.TAI-PAN is epic in scope, a novel whose background is the inception of Hong Kong by the British, circa 1841. Clavell is most famous for Shōgun, the first of his Asian series, which was made into a mini series starring Richard Chamberlain. Struan's only surviving son, Culum, shows potential in the beginning of the book for an arch that never happens. Clavell had an amazing talent for writing natural sounding dialogue between lovers and he showed it in Tai-Pan just as he did in Shogun.