Do you remember that feeling when you were a kid and you would read a book that was too old for you in some way? Where you didn’t fully know why it was upsetting you, but you had that icky feeling where you just wanted to be away from the book? Did y’all experience that as kids? My memory of that feeling is why I feel so confident in kids’ ability to self-censor, so I hope it’s at least somewhat universal.

Anyway, I am a grown-up now, so I mostly don’t feel that feeling anymore. When I feel it now, it’s very often because a book starts leading up to predatory sexual practices. (At least, the last two books that gave me this feeling did it by leading up to predatory sexual practices.) Flood of Fire made me feel that way. (Lolita didn’t, but I was, of course, forewarned.) In the end, nothing as bad as what I was imagining happened, but the feeling lingered.

To be more specific, and a bit spoilery for some things that happen in the middle of the book: A white lady becomes overinterested in the onanistic tendencies of a mixed-race man in her employment and keeps asking him to come to her bedroom to discuss, you know, that. And that is a situation so fraught with badness that if it hadn’t been a book I’ve anticipated for years, I’d have stopped reading.

As with the rest of the series, though, Flood of Fire is kaleidoscopic in scope and more vivid than any other historical novel I’ve read. The people from the Ibis come back together in unexpected and tragic and joyful ways, and that was immensely satisfying. But I’ll probably reread the first two oftener.

Did you have that feeling ever, when you were a kid reading books? Have any of those books stuck with you?

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But then I read some reviews of River of Smoke, and for some reason I got it into my head that it wasn’t a proper sequel that picks up where the first book ended, but more like a Diana Wynne Jones sequel where some of the characters might be around a little bit but don’t count on it. I was disappointed but willing to give Amitav Ghosh the benefit of the doubt. Imagine my delight when River of Smoke picked up — after some not-bad-at-all exposition to tell us previously on the Ibis trilogy — right where Sea of Poppies left off (SPOILERS, obviously, for Sea of Poppies): Neel, Ah Fatt, Jodu, Serang Ali, and Kalua escaping terrible fates on the Ibis, while the others stay behind.

And now imagine my slightly letdownness to find that everyone split up again immediately afterward. Goddammit. Neel and Ah Fatt stayed together, briefly, but I never liked Ah Fatt that much to start with, and he’s not that important to the book as a whole. Ghosh’s twin knacks for lush but not dull descriptions and linguistic awesomeweirdness have not deserted him. Nor has his ability to create vivid, flawed characters who belong utterly to the countries and times that shaped them. (It’s the exact opposite of ExceptoGirl! You can’t imagine Ghosh’s characters being the products of any environments but their own — which, now that I’m articulating it, is a magnificent thing for a writer to be able to do.) The end of the book is also very good: the perfect note of melancholy. Y’all know I love it when a book really ends, not just stops.

I am giving River of Smoke a lower rating than I gave Sea of Poppies, because I now have a concern that these characters are never going to get to play all together! In Sea of Poppies I was sure they would, but after River of Smoke I am way less sure. I love the three new main characters that got invented, because like I said, Ghosh writes good characters, and I want them to play with the others too! I want everyone to get to play! At the same time, in the same place! I want that! As good as River of Smoke was, many of the characters I liked best from Sea of Poppies barely made an appearance at all, or if they did it was only in passing, as if Ghosh wants us to know that he hasn’t forgotten they exist.

Even with its flaws, River of Smoke is — like its predecessor — one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read. Go read Sea of Poppies at once — just roll with the language weirdness, you’ll get your sea legs pretty quickly there — and then read River of Smoke for it is good.

Weird little addendum, which includes spoilers for Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia: There is an extent to which all historical fiction is real in my mind. When Paulette’s new friend Fitcher Penrose says something about the community of botanists being fairly small and all known to each other, I immediately thought: I wonder if he’s old enough to have met Ezra Chater. Then in my imagination — which may or may not gel with what we know of his backstory — Fitcher did meet Ezra Chater, on his first botanical voyage as a very young man, and lost his virginity to Mrs. Chater. Teehee.

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Eva recently gave Sea of Poppies a glowing review, and since she’s just finished reading (and loving) (of course) (cause it’s very lovable) one of my favorite ever books, I am happy to report that I loved Sea of Poppies.  I broke the summer reading rule I made for myself, which was not to read anything while I’m here that I can get when I’m at home.  I broke it for Sea of Poppies, and I’m breaking it for the Odyssey as translated by Fagles, on whom I have an epic crush (get it? get it?).  Can’t help it.  Love boat stories.

Sea of Poppies is the first of three planned books about the Ibis, a ship that sails between India and the Mauritius Island, in the 1830s (just before the Opium Wars, about which I expect to hear much more in successive books).  The book deals with a wide and diverse cast of characters, from a pale-skinned son of an American freedwoman, to the widow of a high-caste opium addict, to a French orphan more comfortable with Indian culture than European, to a former Raja now stripped of his lands and title on a trumped-up charge of forgery – and how their fortunes become entangled with each other and with the Ibis.

My favorite thing about Sea of Poppies is the way it portrays class as both immutable and unbelievably fragile.  Nearly all of our central characters are transgressors of boundaries, whether by their own choice or by the vagaries of fate.  Racial and class distinctions are hugely important to both the Indian and European characters; the dangers faced by (and, to many of the other characters in the story, posed by) our point-of-view characters exist because they do not, or will not, fit the mold. For instance, Zachary is of mixed race, a fact unknown to everyone around him; he dresses like a gentleman and is treated like a gentleman. As a French girl and the ward of a British merchant, Pauline belongs to the “ruling class”; but she was raised by an Indian woman and feels far more comfortable amongst Indians. The interplay between all these characters, and the different places they occupy within society and on the Ibis, makes for fascinating reading.

Which leads to me to my one small complaint. Sea of Poppies, while enthralling because the characters are great and I love all the small, complex dramas that play out along class and racial and gender boundaries for each character, feels very much like the first part of a longer work (which it is, of course). I kept waiting and waiting to see the characters come together and see how they would interact with each other; and when that did happen (about two-thirds of the way through, and in a rather limited way), it was most satisfying. But I wanted more. More! I loved seeing Deeti and Pauline become friends, and Zachary and Jodu a little bit, but I wanted all the characters to be in one spot at one time.

I love to discover new authors, but when I discover them before they have finished writing a series, I am sad to have to wait. This month I have gone from not minding when Megan Whalen Turner’s or Amitav Ghosh’s next book will come out, to minding enormously and with much impatient anticipation. Deeti and Neel are going to be besties (I believe in my heart). Some fool’s going to bring an elephant to awe Gen, and Gen is going to want to steal it (says Megan Whalen Turner).  How good will that be?

What other folks thought:

A Striped Armchair
Shelf Love
Farm Lane Books Blog
Page247
Kiss a Cloud
S. Krishna’s Books
The Boston Bibliophile
Caribousmom
The Asylum
A Progressive on the Prairie
Reviews by Lola
So Many Books
The Reading Life
dovegreyreader scribbles
Evening All Afternoon

Tell me if I missed yours!

*Including, oh my God, Monsters of Men. I can’t even tell you how hard I loved that book. I cannot stop thinking about it. I am craving a reread of the whole series now, though I have almost definitely decided to delay gratification until I get home. If you have not read the Chaos Walking series, you should get started on that right now, because after I have let my Mumsy read it, I’m going to do a giveaway of my ARC. I want to spread the joy. There is this one thing that happens in Monsters of Men that is so joyous and the scene is so perfect that I start grinning like an idiot every time I think about it. And then I go reread that scene. I reread it again just now. It was still perfect.

Edit to add: I finally nailed down what it was that kept running vaguely in and out of my head while I was reading this book! It’s that Monty Python sketch about “I say, old man, I’m afraid we don’t understand your banter” – y’all remember that one??

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