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May. 22nd, 2016 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI loved Sea of Poppies, the first book in Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, SO MUCH!! ...and then the second two books not anywhere near as much, but it was still a cool reading experience?
The Ibis Trilogy is an incredibly rich and well-researched historical epic set right before and heading into the period of the First Opium War, in which the Chinese government tried to put a stop to the sale of opium and the British government threw a brutal capitalist hissy fit.
This brief summary of course entirely leaves out the role of India, which -- given that the opium was grown and produced in India, numerous Indian businessmen were involved in the opium trade, and a significant chunk of the soldiers fighting for the British were Indian sepoys - is what Amitav Ghosh is primarily interested in.
Sea of Poppies is set right before the war and focuses on a number of characters who all end up on a ship carrying indentured migrant workers and convicts to Maritius, including
DEETI: A poppy farmer in Ghazipur to an opium addict who, after her husband's death, ends up fleeing his awful relatives, finding the love of her life, and becoming the de facto older-sister figure for all the women on board the Ibis
ZACHARY REID: A bright young American sailor who by a number of lucky coincidences manages to rise in the ranks and jump to officer status, in large part because no one's remembered to check the original manifest listing his race as black
NEEL RATTAN HALDER: A naive intellectual raja who, after a series of poor business decisions, ends up accused of forgery, stripped of his status and possessions and thrown into prison, which leads to great suffering but also great personal growth
PAULETTE LAMBERT: The daughter of a French botanist, who grew up in India and, after her father's death, is determined to escape somewhere that she can continue doing botany, MAYBE BY CROSS-DRESSING AND JOINING THE IBIS AS A SAILOR
JODU: The son of Paulette's Indian nursemaid, who hearkens for a life of ADVENTURE on the Ibis, while meanwhile doing his best to explain to Paulette that she is unlikely to get away with cross-dressing and joining the Ibis as a sailor
BABOO NOB KISSIN: The very pragmatic but secretly deeply religious Bengali agent of a wealthy British businessman who ends up ... embodying the spirit of his saintly aunt ....?
And these are just the POV characters, there are multitudinous others! Many of the plotlines are wildly tropey in incredibly enjoyable, 19th-century-novel kind of ways. Meanwhile, Amitav Ghosh is enjoying himself tremendously in the way he plays with language -- most of the characters communicate in wildly different dialects and flavors of English, from the sailor's pidgin to Zachary's code-switching to Paulette's franglais; there's no 'correct' version of English and everyone is constantly misunderstanding each other in small ways as they try to navigate a language that's very much in flux. It's super cool, honestly -- like, the trilogy would be worth it for the language games alone.
That said, one of the other things I most enjoyed about Sea of Poppies was the astoundingly refreshing feeling of liking, rooting for, and being invested in every POV character in an epic adventure series! I was really excited to see the continuation of all of their adventures!
Alas, the next two books do not ... exactly do that. River of Smoke, the second book, is set in Canton and focuses primarily on Neel and two new characters -- the wealthy Bombay merchant Bahram Moddie, and Robin Chinnery, a flamboyantly gay British-Indian painter -- through whose eyes Ghosh shows the lead-up to the Opium Wars. The history and wordplay continue to be fascinating, but the book frankly feels more interested describing Canton at this particular historical moment than in actually developing Ghosh's original characters, especially the first-book characters, and I missed them. ;___; Like, it seems like it really wants to be a standalone novel about how Bahram Moddie's Tragic Fall leads to the Opium Wars, rather than the middle book of a complex multi-faceted trilogy. (It's also a very male book, because women are not allowed in Canton -- so Paulette is on the edges of the novel not doing very much, and otherwise it's DUDES DUDES DUDES, which is an extra bummer because there were lots of women and relationships between women in Deeti's storyline and so the loss feels especially abrupt.)
The conclusion, Flood of Fire, weaves back in some of the storylines that were set up on the Ibis, but one of the characters I loved in book 1 has a long Book 3 arc of being Corrupted By Capitalism And Imperialism and transforming into a RAGING ASSHOLE, soooo that was kind of a bummer. And a lot of my other favorites from the first book continue to feel extremely shortchanged (DEETI I MISS YOU COME BACK). On the other hand, another new character -- Bahram Moddie's sheltered and superstitious wife Shireen -- gets a whole arc of unexpected midlife turmoil forcing her to come into her own and discover her agency, which as we all know is one of my FAVORITE kind of arcs, so it's not all bad! And though I was narratively dissatisfied in several respects, the history and wordplay and rich description of the world continue to be fantastic.
(I also should add that I'm not suuuuuuuuper onboard with Amitav Ghosh's handling of queer characters. I mean, there are lots of them! Especially in Book 2, where Basically Everyone In Canton Is Gay. But there's also several instances of Predatory Gay, Robin Chinnery is sympathetic but clearly a Comic Relief Side Character whose flamboyance is played for laughs, and again I don't even know how to talk about what's going on with Baboo Nob Kissin but there's also a level of played-for-laughs that I'm not super comfortable with. The only character I can think of whose queerness is neither Creepy nor Hilarious is Charles King, a historical-record American merchant whose strict anti-opium stance makes him a hero within the novel; a quick google search does not reveal whether the historical record supports the sad gay backstory that Amitav Ghosh has given him.)
The Ibis Trilogy is an incredibly rich and well-researched historical epic set right before and heading into the period of the First Opium War, in which the Chinese government tried to put a stop to the sale of opium and the British government threw a brutal capitalist hissy fit.
This brief summary of course entirely leaves out the role of India, which -- given that the opium was grown and produced in India, numerous Indian businessmen were involved in the opium trade, and a significant chunk of the soldiers fighting for the British were Indian sepoys - is what Amitav Ghosh is primarily interested in.
Sea of Poppies is set right before the war and focuses on a number of characters who all end up on a ship carrying indentured migrant workers and convicts to Maritius, including
DEETI: A poppy farmer in Ghazipur to an opium addict who, after her husband's death, ends up fleeing his awful relatives, finding the love of her life, and becoming the de facto older-sister figure for all the women on board the Ibis
ZACHARY REID: A bright young American sailor who by a number of lucky coincidences manages to rise in the ranks and jump to officer status, in large part because no one's remembered to check the original manifest listing his race as black
NEEL RATTAN HALDER: A naive intellectual raja who, after a series of poor business decisions, ends up accused of forgery, stripped of his status and possessions and thrown into prison, which leads to great suffering but also great personal growth
PAULETTE LAMBERT: The daughter of a French botanist, who grew up in India and, after her father's death, is determined to escape somewhere that she can continue doing botany, MAYBE BY CROSS-DRESSING AND JOINING THE IBIS AS A SAILOR
JODU: The son of Paulette's Indian nursemaid, who hearkens for a life of ADVENTURE on the Ibis, while meanwhile doing his best to explain to Paulette that she is unlikely to get away with cross-dressing and joining the Ibis as a sailor
BABOO NOB KISSIN: The very pragmatic but secretly deeply religious Bengali agent of a wealthy British businessman who ends up ... embodying the spirit of his saintly aunt ....?
And these are just the POV characters, there are multitudinous others! Many of the plotlines are wildly tropey in incredibly enjoyable, 19th-century-novel kind of ways. Meanwhile, Amitav Ghosh is enjoying himself tremendously in the way he plays with language -- most of the characters communicate in wildly different dialects and flavors of English, from the sailor's pidgin to Zachary's code-switching to Paulette's franglais; there's no 'correct' version of English and everyone is constantly misunderstanding each other in small ways as they try to navigate a language that's very much in flux. It's super cool, honestly -- like, the trilogy would be worth it for the language games alone.
That said, one of the other things I most enjoyed about Sea of Poppies was the astoundingly refreshing feeling of liking, rooting for, and being invested in every POV character in an epic adventure series! I was really excited to see the continuation of all of their adventures!
Alas, the next two books do not ... exactly do that. River of Smoke, the second book, is set in Canton and focuses primarily on Neel and two new characters -- the wealthy Bombay merchant Bahram Moddie, and Robin Chinnery, a flamboyantly gay British-Indian painter -- through whose eyes Ghosh shows the lead-up to the Opium Wars. The history and wordplay continue to be fascinating, but the book frankly feels more interested describing Canton at this particular historical moment than in actually developing Ghosh's original characters, especially the first-book characters, and I missed them. ;___; Like, it seems like it really wants to be a standalone novel about how Bahram Moddie's Tragic Fall leads to the Opium Wars, rather than the middle book of a complex multi-faceted trilogy. (It's also a very male book, because women are not allowed in Canton -- so Paulette is on the edges of the novel not doing very much, and otherwise it's DUDES DUDES DUDES, which is an extra bummer because there were lots of women and relationships between women in Deeti's storyline and so the loss feels especially abrupt.)
The conclusion, Flood of Fire, weaves back in some of the storylines that were set up on the Ibis, but one of the characters I loved in book 1 has a long Book 3 arc of being Corrupted By Capitalism And Imperialism and transforming into a RAGING ASSHOLE, soooo that was kind of a bummer. And a lot of my other favorites from the first book continue to feel extremely shortchanged (DEETI I MISS YOU COME BACK). On the other hand, another new character -- Bahram Moddie's sheltered and superstitious wife Shireen -- gets a whole arc of unexpected midlife turmoil forcing her to come into her own and discover her agency, which as we all know is one of my FAVORITE kind of arcs, so it's not all bad! And though I was narratively dissatisfied in several respects, the history and wordplay and rich description of the world continue to be fantastic.
(I also should add that I'm not suuuuuuuuper onboard with Amitav Ghosh's handling of queer characters. I mean, there are lots of them! Especially in Book 2, where Basically Everyone In Canton Is Gay. But there's also several instances of Predatory Gay, Robin Chinnery is sympathetic but clearly a Comic Relief Side Character whose flamboyance is played for laughs, and again I don't even know how to talk about what's going on with Baboo Nob Kissin but there's also a level of played-for-laughs that I'm not super comfortable with. The only character I can think of whose queerness is neither Creepy nor Hilarious is Charles King, a historical-record American merchant whose strict anti-opium stance makes him a hero within the novel; a quick google search does not reveal whether the historical record supports the sad gay backstory that Amitav Ghosh has given him.)
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Date: 2016-05-22 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2016-05-26 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-27 12:14 am (UTC)Is he planning to do more, do you know, or has he just kind of thrown up his hands and declared that he's tired of this?
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Date: 2016-05-27 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-31 01:15 am (UTC)