Tai-Pan: The Second Novel of the Asian Saga

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I do not think I will be able to muster enough words to explain the sensations I felt while reading this awesome novel. There are some major storyline differences, but the extremely lucky, strategic and forward thinking main male character, and the bad-but not so bad antagonist.

I have since come across plenty of criticisms of Clavell, about how much he got wrong, or mangled irredeemably in the process of crafting his complicated thrillers featuring clashing, pre-modern cultures. When you get right down to it Tai-Pan is a historical romance in the older sense (a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. A lot of that cracking energy comes from the titular Tai-Pan (or big cheese) of the work, Dirk Struan.I just try to protect mysel’ and mine as best I know how and to choose the time of my dying, that’s all. But Clavell goes farther, for while there is a George Washington and an Abraham Lincoln who resemble who they generally were in history in Jakes‘ series, Clavell actually invents names to stand in to the company of historical figures.

I did already kinda peek at the beginning and was certainly not bored with his version of the Namamugi attack. 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. And it is in this exciting time and exotic place that a giant of an Englishman, Dirk Straun, sets out to turn the desolate island of Hong Kong into an impregnable fortress of British power, and to make himself supreme ruler…Tai-Pan!Tai-Pan is a title - the leader, strong man, big man on campus – of the richest trading company on Hong Kong.