Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, which I read in audio, is a hard book to pigeonhole. It starts in India, at a time just before the Opium Wars. A widowed villager escapes from the drudgery of her life as an opium farmer, and is drawn to the river and the sea. Meanwhile, an ex-slave ship, The Ibis, arrives into the scene carrying a motley crew, including an American who suddenly finds that he is the second mate. A local rajah falls on hard times and ends up in prison and is sentenced to be sent overseas. All these and more come together on the Ibis, sailing across the Indian Ocean. We're enveloped in the breakdown of society, scandal, race relations, romance and opium addiction - oh, and with a smattering of politics thrown in for good measure. The text utilises local Indian dialects, that were usually translated. But the language in the boat, which was a complete hotchpotch of languages, was sometimes hard to follow. There are some interesting characters and the setting is different to one I've encountered before, but I wasn't completely transported away by this book. When I first finished the book, I couldn't understand why the ending was so unsatisfactory, with lots left up in the air - but I now realise that this is book one of a trilogy. It does have an other worldly nature to it, but I really don't know if I liked it enough to continue onto book two!
My STAR rating: THREE
Length: 544 pages
Price I paid: £6.50
Formats available: Print, unabridged audio (CD or download), ebook.
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