Noble House

Rating:
Summary: detailed and intriguing !!
Review: A very good novel about Hong Kong. As a native of Hong Kong, it fascinates me.

To my knowledge. all the events that took place in this book had happened in Hong Kong or Asia in some ways.

I must , however, comment that it is much too long for the layman who is not familiar with Hong Kong or China. This is not a spy novel nor a thriller and I wonder if such a person have the patience or time to go through it. In this day and age of television, this could be a great TV series but such a long and detailed book may not have much appeal. In any case, I must commend James Clavell for producing this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Modern Continuation of Tai Pan
Review: Like all of Clavell's books since 1980, I bought Noble House the moment I knew it was available. Unfortunately, that was during a week of law school finals. Although I finished the thousand pages in a few days, my grades turned out to be a full level below all my other semesters. That's how spellbinding Noble House is. This book is certainly top rate in terms of plot, suspense and characters in its own right, but what bound me to it during all my spare time was the interrelationship with the characters from Clavell's previous Hong Kong novel, Tai Pan and, to a lesser extent, King Rat. The same was true later with Whirlwind and Gai Jin, neither of which gathered a speck of dust in the bookstore before I bought it. Even today, I mourn over the fact that Clavell didn't live long enough to write another 2 or 3 books in his series. I have never read any other author who leaves so many questions unanswered and so many critical issues unresolved, but does so in a way that feeds the curiosity so strongly rather than disappointing. It is a tribute to Clavell's monumental skill as a storyteller that this is a strength of his novels rather than a major irritant to his readers. Very few of those readers stopped at one Clavell novel and, as far as I know, almost everyone who has read one goes on to read all the rest. Unlike so many of today's authors, he writes about heroes who aren't made of cardboard and who hold genuine mystery no matter how closely they are observed.

Rating:
Summary: James Clavell's Greatest Work
Review: Noble House is undoubtedly Clavell's greatest work. Although Tai-pan, Shogun and King Rat are excellent books in their own right, Noble House keeps the reader enthralled to the last page. Tai-pan makes good reading in itself and serves as a prequel to Noble House. However, it is not necessary to read Tai-pan before Noble House. I did not but I still found this work exciting. The plots - CIA versus KGB versus PRC Intelligence versus MI-5/MI-6, Gornt versus Dunross versus Bartlett, Orlanda versus Casey and a variety of characters (other than those already mentioned), makes the 1400 plus pages light work - it is truly a classic by an author with deep insights in the culture and international relations of Hong Kong and its neighbours and trading partners. The boardroom drama is intense and Clavell leaves the reader guessing who will emerge winner until the end. I recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Clavell's greatest, fascinating characters in fine setting
Review: Set 120 years after the events of Tai-Pan, Ian Dunross is the latest in Dirk Struan's line to head Struan's, also known as the Noble House. To survive, Struan's always skates the financial edge, and Quillan Gornt, descendant of Dirk's enemy, Tyler Brock, is quite happy to push it over the edge.

Even though we meet many fine characters, from American businesswoman Casey Tcholok to smuggler's son Paul Choy, Hong Kong itself is really the star of this novel. Seeming almost anarchic at times, the colony (as it then was, the novel is set in 1963) and its people, Chinese and British, seem to worship one god, Money.

Clavell ties in references to his other novels--characters from King Rat show up and relive their wartime hatred, many of the characters discuss and live out the heritage of Tai-Pan, and a Japanese character mentions briefly the events of Shogun.

This is the sort of book that will keep you up reading until 4 a.m.

What I didn't like: I found the character of Peter Marlowe most annoying. He shows up all the time, acts like a know it all, and is really Clavell's way of writing himself into the book. Also, about six different times, it is mentioned that the U.S. is starting to get involved in Vietnam, and each time, a precient character chirps (or at least thinks) that the U.S. will regret it. Hindsight is 20/20, the novel was published in 1981.

A good read.