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57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Suspense, Substance, and Skill, May 31, 2003
This review is from: Dragon Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
It was nearly my bedtime when I picked up Lisa See's DRAGON BONES expecting to read for a half hour or so. But I was caught and I kept reading until after 3 a.m.Same thing the next night until I finished the novel. I am not usually a fan of thrillers. A decaying body floating miles and miles on the Yangzi River, with minute details as to its progressive decomposition and mutilation, doesn't strike one as an enticing way to lead readers into a book. But in this case, it is. Lisa See artfully uses the body's journey to introduce the complex web of geography, history, myth, religion, as well as national and international politics, art, economics-and terrorism--in which her characters move. See's sleuths, as in two earlier books, are an intriguing married couple, Inspector Liu Hulan of the Ministry of Public Security, native of Beijing, educated in the United States, and Lawyer David Stark, whom Liu first met while both were in law school in the United States. They are convincing and attractive, although their survival in some of their perilous undertakings is almost beyond belief. We share in their sometimes troubled relationship with each other as well as in their battles against evil forces and people. Not one murder, but several, it turns out. One might wish that the final and bloodiest murder had been performed off-stage.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The best part of this book was the China setting, July 4, 2006
This is a thriller/mystery set in China at an archeological dig. The detective Hulan, a Chinese woman married to David, an American lawyer, works for the state police and has been assigned the job of looking into the death of a young American man fished out of the Yangtze River. It is quickly determined who he is and where he must have come from (the archeological site), so she and her husband are sent there, although Hulan resists because she doesn't want to be taken away from her work investigating a religious cult. Hulan is asked to investigate the man's death, and David is asked to look into the possibility that relics from this site are finding their way illegally into art auctions. The place they're excavating is going to be flooded by the construction of a bigger-than-Hoover-Dam dam that will displace vast numbers of people. There is a rather large cast of characters, many of whom are staying at a Chinese guesthouse with Hulan and David. You get the impression that the murderer is either one of the people at the archeological dig or that one of these people knows what happened. A sub plot involve trouble in the marriage of David and Hulan.
I was enjoying this until the end, and then it just seemed too over-the-top. I thought it was much more violent than it needed to be or that made any sense to me. On the other hand, reading about China and the controversial damming of the Yangtze River was quite interesting.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A dragon's tale., June 5, 2003
This review is from: Dragon Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
"Dragon Bones" is the third book in a series featuring Inspector Liu Hulan and her attorney husband David Stark. Five years have passed since the tragedy that punctuated "The Interior." And Hulan and David are still grappling with a personal crisis in their lives.
Hulan has become a fully realized character in this novel. Author See does some things with her that she has not done before. For the first time there is a feistiness about her. She has certainly become more assertive in her role as an inspector. She remains the only female in a world of law enforcement dominated by men.
Hulan's sexuality also comes into play in "Dragon Bones." There is a sassiness about the way she carries herself around a certain male character. She is put in more than one situation where she must walk a fine line between remaining faithful to her husband or cheating on him.
In the end, Hulan is able to exorcise her demons. All of her issues get washed away by the Yangzi River. And like Andy Dufresne, she comes out clean on the other side. Hulan has reinvented herself and in so doing has returned to the character we first met in the opening pages of "Flower Net." The author could not have written a better ending. She has effectively set the stage for the next installment in this series.
Lisa See's storytelling, like her character development, has improved since "Flower Net." The plot is tight and well conceived. We are thrust into the story when the first dead body shows up in the opening sentence of the prologue, unlike her previous novels where we had to wait for several pages.
In conclusion, Lisa See has once again opened up a world that most of us will never experience first hand. She doesn't just take us to contemporary China, she takes us off the beaten path. Like the caverns that are so much a part of this story, the country is an organic entity. It is at times an antagonist, and even when it isn't, it is never neutral. I am fully captivated by it.
We are not just entertained in "Dragon Bones," we are educated as well. And isn't that what a good novel is supposed to do?
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