I really wanted to love "Tai-Pan" as much as I loved "Shōgun," but I had some serious emotional hurdles with this book: 1. Aside from May-May, the female characters are weak and underdeveloped (even Tess was a letdown). 2. The annexation narrative always rubs me the wrong way. The British had no right to be there in the first place (or anywhere they occupied, annexed, colonized, etc. – and the same goes for other countries that did it). It just screams white centrism and white savior complex. 3...

Fantastic, by God. It's joss that I was able to read *Tai-Pan* again and love it just as much as the first time. This is the book that sparked my obsession with trading houses. A fabulous historical fiction for anyone with an interest in Hong Kong. If you're looking for great historical fiction, especially something related to Hong Kong's history, definitely check out James Clavell's *Tai-Pan*.

A highly compelling book with a whopper of an ending that's somehow simultaneously epic and subtle. I don't feel *Tai-Pan* reached the heights of *Shogun* in terms of thematic content or characterization, but I marveled at the political and interpersonal intrigues with a large cast of characters, all with very interesting motivations. James Clavell has crafted a very well plotted book that rarely sagged, and took a story about an era and event that frankly I'm not really that interested in readi...

A masterful work from an extremely talented storyteller. Truth be told, I think *Tai-Pan* was better written than Shōgun, even though I actually liked the 1975 book set in Japan better. *Tai-Pan* is more streamlined, more focused on its subject and narrative. *Tai-Pan* was James Clavell’s second book, first published in 1966, and is coincidentally also the second chronological book in his Asian saga of books. (Shōgun was his third published book but first in chronological order). It was an imm...

***MOVIE ADDENDUM ADDED SEPT 13th, 2014***”’Joss’ was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the devil combined.” Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages when the English traders arrived in 1841. The port quickly proved a safe haven to ships even impervious to Typhoons.Dirk Lochlin Struan is a Scotsman who has spent a good part of his adult life in the orient amassing a fleet of clipper ships and a great fortune. He is called the Tai-Pan. He has made his own joss by bein...

I've read *Tai-Pan* before and really liked it, but it's even better as an audiobook. Incredible, really. John Lee has great accents and intonations and really makes the book come alive. James Clavell is most famous for *Shōgun*, the first of his Asian series, which was made into a mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain. It was excellent and takes place about 2.5 centuries earlier in Japan. *Tai-Pan* is about the founding of Hong Kong around 1840 and takes place over a period of 6 months. It ...

Absolutely brilliant! But I was NOT expecting that ending. I mean, something similar, maybe, but the way it all wrapped up? NOPE. It genuinely broke my heart a little, and yeah, I cried. Usually, that would ruin a book for me, but *Tai-Pan* by James Clavell is a flat-out masterpiece. I honestly can't find a single bad thing to say about it. There were so many fantastic characters, especially Dirk and his Mei Mei. They were just so perfectly suited for each other – yin and yang, you know? Some...

Big, chewy, lip-smacking, gut-busting fiction. How appropriate that I finished *Tai-Pan* on Thanksgiving – a day dedicated to gastronomical excess. Whew. This isn't a historical tome. It's a fictionalized account of the first year of the British colony of Hong Kong (1841). The characters are all *loosely* based on real people, as are their trading companies. That's what James Clavell did in his novels, and it's important to understand that. Clavell was also a staunch supporter of free trade, a...

After starting with King Rat, I devoured most of James Clavell's Asian Saga before losing steam – and interest – with the overly long and somewhat lackluster Whirlwind. Of them all, Tai-Pan was my absolute favorite. Shogun was fantastic: mysterious, complex, cruel, violent, erotic, steeped in elaborate manners and rituals, alien thought patterns, ironclad honor, smelly Europeans – the whole shebang. But it lacked the Struans versus the Brocks rivalry. Their crackling, bloody, rollicking, cutthro...

I was hoping for a quick, informative history of Hong Kong, but I ended up with James Clavell's *Tai-Pan*. I read *Shogun* when I was 14 and remember enjoying it enough to plow through all 1000+ pages (and that sex scene with the anal beads? Mind-blowing for my 14-year-old self. And my DAD had read it! Ugh).Maybe my tastes have changed, but *Tai-Pan* is pretty disappointing. There are a lot of interesting historical details, but they feel forced. And the main character is, well, basically perfec...