Has anyone else read this? What did you think? I loved it but

I want to read it at some point, but it's like a thousand pages long.

>>9065254
Ive read it about 20 times. My mother had it when I was little and I wasnt allowed to watch TV and my access to adult books was very limited (again due to mother confiscating anything that was naughty) so I read this over and over.

As an adult it bothers the fuck out of me that he changed the names and didnt have real battle scenes. Also the sex scenes taught me about sex.

>>9065254
heh i was just playing bureaucracy by infocom. that game is stupidly impossible.

>>9065550
To be honest i listened to it, the Ralph Lister reading is pure 10/10.

>>9065570
What did you think about the ending, and i suppose the Ninja assault is the climactic battle.

I felt the start of the book to be very different to the end, the first half is very european, the last half is very japanese.

>>9065591
The final scene should have been sekigahara. Instead it was a paragraph in italics. As you said the ending is garbage and well could have been given a whole other volume. It also bothers me that Blackthorne is given such a huge role regarding his knowledge in firearms, when in fact Japanese gunnery was mastered by Nobunaga, and that his knowledge of the siege of malta was really talked up, and naturally should have been suggested that he was the genius behind the siege of Osaka castle, but instead all that shit was forgotten about and he spent his time fucking around. Not to mention the tons of catholic plot strings that should have ended with the persecution of the christians, but even that was ignored.

Thinking on it now the whole novel bothers me a great deal, and I liked Tai-Pan better

>>9065619
Yeah i don't know what to think of it, i can kind of see the approach he was going for but he failed to tie up every part, i was also excited to see the siege of malta come into play, i also really wanted to see him take the blackship but its quite obvious it wont happen nearing the end. It's almost like Clavell forgot what he wrote. He could have at least given us a longer summary of what happened. The only scrap we're given i suppose is that Toranagas thoughts are definitely what happened, and look to William Adams in history.

I haven't read any of his others, i was thinking of going to Gai Jin to continue the japanese theme but ive heard its his weakest one.

>>9065647
just read Yoshikawa, its what you want but far, far more fulfilling.

Clavell is part of a dead brand of western historical novel writers ala Larry McMurtry, Colleen McCullough, Jean M. Auel, and John Jakes who were basically writing door-stops in the hopes that they would become tv movie of the week miniseries.

>>9065684
alternately, you could read the authors I just listed, they are very similar to clavell in structure if not actual prose. Lots of action, sex, strong male leads, sultry flawed female love interests.

Thorn Birds, Lonesome Dove, North and South, Clan of the Cave Bear etc.

>>9065254

Fantastic book. Wildly popular at the time but somehow it's getting forgotten by history. Unjustly, IMO. Very well written, researched, and plotted.

>>9065570
>As an adult it bothers the fuck out of me that he changed the names

I like this choice. He clearly wanted a swords-and-swashbuckling adventure novel, but whereas a modern book or movie would use the real names and fictionalize what happened-- basically saying "fuck you" to real history, Clavell changed the names so that he wouldn't be polluting the real historical account.

>>9065619

I think you're missing that the real main protagonist was Toranaga. The framing device was the love affair between Blackthorne and Mariko, but the story is illustrating the personality, ability, and outlook of Toranaga.

The reader is left to guess how much if anything Toranaga gains from Blackthorne's knowledge (other than his training of the samurai in the tactics of William of Orange, and the revelations about the nature and goals of catholic imperialism). The siege of malta only came up once; it's hardly treated by the narrative as a critical piece of the puzzle. To me, even as a teenager, it was obvious enough how the Catholic plotline would play out that I felt that it had reached a conclusion: the catholics would support Toranaga until he was firmly in power, and the Toranaga would oppress and harass the catholics into oblivion.

The final battle was abbreviated because how would you frame the narrative? Who's left to provide the POV for the battle itself? I think the choice to leave out the battle was a wise one. It doesn't tell us anything new about the characters and then drags things out as you have a denouement that's got too much going on, but too little that's relevant to the framing device.

With all that said, I loved Tai Pan as well, but IMO the real gem of the Asian Saga was King Rat.

>>9065647

Whirlwind was his weakest novel. Clavell had a deep and insightful grasp of Asia, but Persia simply wasn't his bag.

>>9065704
>The final battle was abbreviated because how would you frame the narrative? Who's left to provide the POV for the battle itself? I think the choice to leave out the battle was a wise one. It doesn't tell us anything new about the characters and then drags things out as you have a denouement that's got too much going on, but too little that's relevant to the framing device.
Yes but it would have been extremely satisfying, sometimes you have to give the reader that. Clavell would have done it justice.

>>9065704
>The final battle was abbreviated because how would you frame the narrative? Who's left to provide the POV for the battle itself? I think the choice to leave out the battle was a wise one. It doesn't tell us anything new about the characters and then drags things out as you have a denouement that's got too much going on, but too little that's relevant to the framing device.

I feel like the two volumes were in the shape of a funnel, and the end was obviously sekigahara. Even if he wrote it from Toranga's/Tokugawa's perspective in some sort of perspective device, even in one chapter, maybe in third person narrative, it would have closed the novel better.

Furthermore, I feel like the scene in the throne room, where Blackthorne says paraphrasing, its been a while rebellion against your lord is justified if you win, is the paramount scene of the book. Osaka and Malta are obviously implied, but we never got to see Toranga getting briefed by blackthorne on that, or other aspects of portuguese fuckery. And this is not an artistic book. It is in flat narrative and borders on "genre fiction". So leaving stuff like that out doesnt serve like some south american magical realism novel, it merely serves to make the reader feel unsatisfied.

>>9065751

IMO you're selling the book short and you're saying the author should have sold himself short, too.

Malta was openly discussed... on one half of one page, as something that Blackthorne realized he could use as leverage against Toranaga but shouldn't reveal just yet. He wasn't even talking to Toranaga at the time. The implication you consider so important is possible, maybe even likely, but very very peripheral to the story.

I'm not saying that Toranaga is the narrator. I'm saying that the story is using the Mariko/Blackthorne relationship to illuminate and explore the personality and beliefs of Toranaga. Those final chapters by the shore where Toranaga's planning his future and revealing his goals and strategies are where the veil finally drops and you see Toranaga as he sees himself (having mostly been seen through the lens of the other characters up to that point).

At that point, what's important is that you're seeing him planning the final battle, and beyond that the political environment where he'll seize power and then patiently wait for Ochiba and her son to make some mistake so he can destroy them, too, and then drive the catholics out of Japan. What's on display is his foresight and planning and combination of nobility and guile.

After that, what happens next is anticlimax. Or, if you push that foresight chapter until later, then there's less to foresee and it's more a matter of him being petty and gloating than being a visionary. He ended right where he needed to. The battle scene wasn't and couldn't ever be as exciting as it would be in a TV show or movie. As prose, battle scenes tend to disappoint.

Plus for dramatic tension you'd need to have shown it from a POV that concealed Toranaga's advantages so it looks like the outcome is in the balance-- but that contradicts the whole point of being Toranaga and fighting only when you're sure to win. Revealing then that he'd held all the cards long before the battle was fought would have been anticlimactic.

I think Clavell did precisely what he needed to do.

>>9065982
An Epilogue would have been nice though, especially about what happened to Blackthorne.