River of Smoke

The absence of food doesn’t make a man forsake hunger – it only makes him hungrier. In this the second instalment of The Ibis trilogy Amitav Ghosh sets the bar incredibly high. So high in fact I got a little dizzy from all the sights and sounds and smells that I was introduced to in so many of th......more

The Opium Trade triangle (Britain-India-China) story continues… Preamble: --For context, see my review of Book 1: Sea of Poppies. --I look forward to reading a revisionist history of the Opium Trade in Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China, which apparently focuses blame not on Britain’s Opiu......more

We are ready to forgive a lot to the heroes of book cycles, this is how the effect of the series works when the characters become a little relatives. But a third-rate soap opera raid, in the case of end-to-end heroes and actions, is more difficult to avoid. And only when the author manages to find a......more

The preceeding book, Sea of Poppies, ends in a stereotypical cliffhanger, so I expected AG to continue the tale with all the same characters in River of Smoke and AG may have entertained this plan at the time. Instead we are injected, after the briefest enchainement, into a new scenario, namely, the......more

This is the second installment in the Ibis Trilogy and I have no doubt that upon completion it will be nothing short of a masterpiece. This is the most amazing work of historical fiction that I have ever read. Where "Sea Of Poppies" mostly takes place in India preceding the opium wars, "River Of Smo......more