publication.
There are some minor textual oddities -- phrases like "with his tale between his legs" and "scurrying out into the lobby, she swear she saw ..." Triple exclamation points abound. Phrases such as "that hated Lovencraft beast" and "gay as a goose" recur. (It should be said in passing that neither the author nor her main character anywhere express anti-gay sentiments, though the plot offers many opportunities for them, the nearest thing being some self-loathing outbursts put into the mouth of Ahmed himself).
All this may suggest a world of self-published popular romantic fiction. Yet the book is slightly more sophisticated than this, displaying a knowledge of history, a clear-headed control of plot, and strongly delineated characters, even if their dialogue exchanges are sometimes stereotyped and formulaic.
It's possible this reviewer isn't sufficiently experienced in reading popular novels aimed at a wide readership to make a fair assessment of this sometimes steamy amalgam. There's no doubt the story proceeds with pace and that its characters confront each other with vigor and decisiveness.
If your preference is for books that are cogent, skeptical and ironic, this novel will probably appear gushing, generalizing and over-emotional. It is nevertheless a work that could find a ready audience among English-speaking foreigners in Taiwan. There isn't a boring page, even if there are some embarrassing ones. It's enthusiastic rather than stylish and may raise a few laughs where the author didn't intend them.
Even so, it's a book that readers eager for red-blooded fiction with a local setting may decide they can't afford to ignore. There aren't, after all, that many novelists at work willing to take on Taiwan on the grand scale in quite this unbridled fashion.
The book is available at Caves and Bookman.
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