I immediately put this book on hold when I found out what it was. I always get into some kick where I want to learn about Chinese history and literatuI immediately put this book on hold when I found out what it was. I always get into some kick where I want to learn about Chinese history and literature, but it can be hard to remember details when you have almost no cultural context for even basic things, like names. So, having known the power historical fiction has to make me remember things, I was really excited about this.
Now, I'm sure I would have realized this if I had even finished reading the description of the book, but it's really only pseudo-historical. Countries mentioned are based on real ones but have fictional names, so the Chinese are the Nikara and the Federation of Mugen is Japan, etc. This was a little disappointing because my goal was to learn about Chinese history (specifically the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, as it turns out) in a fun way, so this made it a little more oblique. However, that almost didn't matter, since Kuang gave us the broad strokes in a very thick layer, and I can't say I learned nothing or wasn't encouraged to look into the real events.
Well, fuck the heavenly order of things. If getting married to a gross old man was her preordained role on this earth, then Rin was determined to rewrite it.
I don't know if it's because of my lack of any broader familiarity of Chinese history, folklore, etc., but the beginning is like a twist on Mulan. And specifically the Disney movie. I swear there is even a line in this part that is the exact same structure as when the emperor lists all the dishonorable shit Mulan did before adding that she saved the empire. That line seemed pretty cheesy to me because of that, but I'm not sure if I'm just drawing an inappropriate connection to one of my few touchpoints.
Anyway, Rin is an orphan forced to work for a couple who are kind of assholes. She's nearing marriageable age, and they want to sell her off to a husband. After meeting with a matchmaker, she's set to marry an old man.
But there's a long-shot alternative. Every year, people can test to be eligible for training at an academy, so Rin is determined to escape the marriage via the higher-education system. This seems to have been based on a real test called the Imperial examination (check out those exam booth photos!) that was meant to fill government positions based on merit. Despite my couple of complaints. This was all pretty fun.
But you want to know why no one takes this class seriously?” “Because you keep farting in faculty meetings?”
Okay, sorry, but the school/training kind of reminds me of Mulan, too. Mixed with Harry Potter and the promise of psychedelics. In other words, pretty fun.
“Nikan did not win the Second Poppy War,” Yim reiterated. “The Federation is gone because we were so pathetic that the great naval powers to the west felt bad for us. We did such a terrible job defending our country that it took genocide for Hesperia to intervene. While Nikara forces were tied up on the northern front, a fleet of Federation ships razed the Dead Island overnight. Every man, woman, and child on Speer was butchered, and their bodies burned. An entire race, gone in a day.”
So, the third part of the book is what leaves me bouncing between 3 and 4 stars. I didn't like where the fantasy element went. It just got so extreme it seemed ridiculous. On the other hand, there were a lot of important events here, too. Overall, I liked the first two parts more even though this was probably the main story.
It's interesting reading this after Yellowface and to see how The Poppy War fueled such a different book. Kuang takes examples of abuse directly from the real Nanjing Massacre, and it seems she had been criticized for it. I don't think it's wrong for an author to tell someone else's tragedy, especially one who can't tell it, since that's literally their expertise and what they are for. I also have a feeling that this wouldn't be a debate if Kuang had just called it China instead of Nikan, making it more firmly historical fiction than a leveraging or lifting of history.
I was also surprised that the writing style ended up being so similar to the style in Yellowface. She has a fairly sparse style for this kind of book. I think she writes sort of closely to what the character would be thinking, so there isn't a ton of description. I'm not sad about that, either, because this book probably would have been 1000 pages if written by most writers of either fantasy or historical fiction....more
Hoelun’s first baby supposedly struggled into the world tightly clutching something mysterious and ominous in the fingers of his right hand. G
Hoelun’s first baby supposedly struggled into the world tightly clutching something mysterious and ominous in the fingers of his right hand. Gently, but nervously, his young mother pried back his fingers one by one to find a large, black blood clot the size of a knucklebone. From somewhere in his mother’s warm womb, this boy had grasped the blood clot and brought it with him from that world into this one. What could an inexperienced, illiterate, and terribly lonely young girl make of this strange sign in her son’s hand?
I certainly learned some things about Genghis Khan and the Mongols, but I couldn't tell you for sure which are actually true. That's my problem with this book. So, let's just get this part out of the way.
While Weatherford is clearly passionate about the subject, the way he presents information can be misleading. For example, at one point he mentions that they Mongolians practiced all of these unexpectedly modern procedures, such as fingerprinting of criminals, he doesn't do so with any context. I look it up, and fingerprinting had been done long before the rise of the Mongol Empire. With any context on the pre-existing use of fingerprinting, the statement about the Mongols doing it doesn't have a clear meaning and makes it sound like they were the first. Since it was a big part of his thesis anyway, I don't know why he didn't distinguish between what the Mongols invented and what they borrowed and brought together from other cultures.
There was also some bit about Kublai Khan's connection to the Forbidden City that was poorly explained. From my own fact-checking, it turns out he had nothing to do with it except his palace is believed to have been built in the same spot (which is typical). He was also not the first to unite China. This book could make you sound like a real dumbass. And he says the Mongolian word for human is Hun, supposedly supporting a direct descent from the Huns to the Mongols; however, this doesn't seem to be either etymologically or historically accurate.
Smell holds a deep, important place within steppe culture. Where people in other cultures might hug or kiss at meeting or departing, the steppe nomads sniff one another in a gesture much like a kiss on the cheek.
*sigh* He better not be pulling our leg. Onto the highlights, I suppose.
I was surprised by how much this book humanized the people in Genghis Khan's early life. In this, we run into the problem of not only Weatherford's unreliability, but also in the reliability of what is probably the only source that provides the early history of Genghis Khan's life and family, the Secret History of the Mongols. Unfortunately, the main purpose of this text lies more on the side of propaganda than an attempt at accurate scholarship.
In any case, he was born into a culture that practiced the kidnapping of women to take as wives. His own mother had been kidnapped by his father from her first husband. And Genghis Khan was absolutely pissed when someone kidnapped his own wife, beloved to him since his boyhood. Though he was born to a sort of underclass, this issue drove him in his first steps on the path he's known for. When he was able to, he banned it altogether, and women enjoyed more power and respect in the Mongol Empire compared to medieval Europe.
The Hapsburg troops captured a Mongol officer, who, to the surprise and consternation of the Christians, turned out to be a middle-aged literate Englishman.
Overall, the picture Weatherford paints the impression that, despite being born a backsteppe horseman, Genghis Khan was ahead of his times in many ways. He was more interested in adopting from the cultures he conquered than imposing his own, and these people were brought into his inner ranks. One reason he was so reviled in Europe is that he didn't participate in the game of keeping the nobles alive; in fact, kings and aristocrats were the one type of people that often couldn't be trusted as they would cause problems later.
The book reaches a low point after Genghis Khan's death. The children who immediately succeeded him are a blur of failure. For me, it picked back up again with Kublai Khan. Maybe because of the Coleridge poem; his name is somehow sufficient to spark the Western imagination.
The more he conquered, the more he had to conquer.
Ultimately, it seems like Genghis Khan's big mistake was letting his empire be divided by nepotism that often proved talentless. As for Weatherford, he could have avoided the problems in this book with more precision and context....more