Customer Reviews

Noble House (Coronet Books)

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ian Dunross, in a driving torrential rain, arrives at the Struan Building in Hong Kong. There he meets with Alastair Struan, the current tai pan (ultimate ruler) of the Noble House. At this meeting Struan confers the title of tai pan on Dunross and he must take an oath to uphold the traditions and oaths established by the first tai pan and founder of the Noble House, Dirk Struan, one of the first and certainly the mightiest of the China Traders from the early 19th century. At this meeting Dunross discovers that a ship containing a disproportionate amount of the Noble House's uninsured wealth has gone down imperiling the House's future.

The book then jumps forward three years, to August of 1963, and the Noble House's financial predicament has grown, if anything, worse. Linc Bartlett, an American billionaire, and his ambitious and stunningly beautiful protégé, K. C. Tcholok arrive in Hong Kong aboard his private Boeing 707 (remember this is 1963). They are in Hong Kong to establish a presence in the lucrative Oriental markets and to make a deal with the Noble House or one of its competitors.

Hidden in the wheel-well of the jet are rifles, ammunition, and grenades which are strictly prohibited in Hong Kong. Their origin as well as their purpose is revealed to us gradually as we come to know the protagonist and current tai-pan, Ian Dunross and the multitude of complex problems that he must contend with.

We discover early on that there is a Judas Iscariot in the Noble House, the comprador Phillip Chen's son, John Chen, who is inexplicably kidnapped. Bartlett is playing the Noble House against it's arch-enemy and biggest competitor, Rothwell-Gornt run by Quillan Gornt, a descendant of Tyler Brock who is the arch-enemy of the first tai-pan, Dirk Struan. Gornt is using his former mistress, Orlanda Ramos, to spy on Bartlett and to manipulate him into a favorable disposition toward his company.

Ian Dunross has a highly secret source of intelligence named Alan Medford Grant from a London Strategic Planning Institute and one of his reports to the tai-pan is intercepted by Roger Crosse of Hong Kong Special Intelligence. Shortly afterwards Grant turns up dead in England as a result of foul play. The information in Grant's reports are yet another important element in the complex tale crafted by Clavell. We learn from the report that the Noble House has a Russian mole within and that there is a mole high up in the Hong Kong government.

Nearly every rivalry and association has its roots in the past dating back to at least the original China traders of the early 19th century. Clavell does a marvelous job of integrating the past and the present drawing on his knowledge not only of China and the Orient, but of high finance with repeated references to Sun Tzu's "Art of War."

Even some of the characters from Clavell's marvelous "King Rat" make an appearance. The King himself does not appear and is only alluded to, but Robin Grey, as a labor MP and Socialist sympathizer, and Peter Marlowe, a writer and thinly disguised James Clavell himself do appear.

Clavell is an astute observer of human nature enabling him to craft an amazingly complex and engaging tale tying together a multitude of disparate elements in a believable manner that is too often overlooked in todays half-baked novels. This book is long at over 1300 pages but well worth the effort. I would recommend reading Clavell's "Tai Pan" first, if possible, but this is not mandatory.

I first read this book on a vacation to Harbor Island in 1981 and was so utterly absorbed by the book that I ignored many of my social responsibilities.

I've just completed reading the book again at age 54 and have actually enjoyed it MORE than the first time I read it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Clavell was perhaps the greatest Western writer of Asian historical fiction. In this epic novel he captures the spirit of the Western trading companies as they maneuver in British Hong Kong. We find out what has happened to the house and lineage first created in Taipan, and how the trials and tribulations have been passed from generation to generation.

This book captures many of the strengths of the entire series:
- Characters are portrayed as complex individuals, not just one dimensional drones
- There's tons of history and cultural lessons hidden between the story lines
- Character lines are carried cross-book in the series

Definitely a solid (if not short) read!

This book makes a leap of one century from Clavell's _Gai-jin_, and presents an interesting look at the culture and economy of Hong Kong. I cannot say how accurate it is except in one respect: passion for gambling. Having worked for years with natives of Hong Kong I believe Clavell has captured this aspect well.

What Clavell does best with _Noble House_ is to maintain a high suspense level. Every character in the book could die; one must wait a long time to find out how it's going to turn out. Most of the characters are interesting enough. Just the shenanigans involved with the Hong Kong economy would make this a worthwhile read.

Noble House is undoubtedly Clavell's greatest work. Although Tai-pan, Shogun and King Rat are excellent books in their own right, Noble House keeps the reader enthralled to the last page. Tai-pan makes good reading in itself and serves as a prequel to Noble House. However, it is not necessary to read Tai-pan before Noble House. I did not but I still found this work exciting. The plots - CIA versus KGB versus PRC Intelligence versus MI-5/MI-6, Gornt versus Dunross versus Bartlett, Orlanda versus Casey and a variety of characters (other than those already mentioned), makes the 1400 plus pages light work - it is truly a classic by an author with deep insights in the culture and international relations of Hong Kong and its neighbours and trading partners. The boardroom drama is intense and Clavell leaves the reader guessing who will emerge winner until the end. I recommend this book to anyone.

This book doesn't have the historical sweep, grandeur and other-worldly feel of SHOGUN, but it is even more densely packed with political and personal machinations, intrigue, "pillowing," colorful characters and tension than any of Clavell's other books. I began it with feelings of apprehension, thinking "Oh, no, 1400 pages of Hong Kong corporate intrigue...how good can THAT be?"

Well, it's pretty darn good!!! Yes, there's corporate intrigue, but it's actually kept to a minimum. There are murder mysteries, kidnappings, disasters, sexual intrigue, huge sums of money being thrown around, and lots of detailed glimpses into the psyche of the Chinese, Europeans and just the unique world of Hong Kong in general.

If I could have, the book would get 4.5 stars. I have just a couple of problems with it. 1) As in TAI PAN and GAI JIN, the end of the book features a major natural disaster which has the effect of sorting out some of the problems the main characters are having...it feels like a deux ex machina from a Greek tragedy, especially now that Clavell has done it three times! 2) The ending feels a bit rushed. We've invested 1300+ pages into the book and its interesting characters...a richer ending would be in order. (Although for rushed, unsatisfying endings, you can't beat GAI JIN!)

That being said, the book is richly rewarding, and frankly, quite amazing. Clavell has successfully juggled perhaps dozens of storylines and scores of characters. The outline for the book alone must have been hundreds of pages. And all of it takes place in the course of one week!

Please, if you haven't read other Clavell books, read them in order!!! They are all great, but to be truly appreciated, they BEG to be read in order: SHOGUN, TAI PAN, GAI JIN, KING RAT, NOBLE HOUSE and WHIRLWIND. All are very rewarding, exciting reads.

It's 1963. Hong Kong business conglomerate Noble House teeters on its foundations, dangerously close to collapse. With enemies and fair-weather friends on all sides vying for a chunk of the fallout rubble, Ian Dunross Struan, tai-pan of the Noble House, must somehow wheel and deal his way into at least twenty million dollars to pay off his debts and save his inheritance. But the tai-pan's struggle is just the surface layer of story, for in _Noble House_ James Clavelle weaves an incredible amount of subplots and historical tangents into a seamless whole-a massive tome that should give the consistent reader many hours of entertainment. Included in this week and a half of Hong Kong history: cold war espionage, bank failures and hostile takeovers, stock market fluctuations, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, high-price concubines and the men that desperately seek to please them, horse racing with enormous sums on the line, and the ever-present threat of a sudden typhoon or earthquake to interrupt everyone's fun and put things in perspective.

_Noble House_ is structured in the typical novel format, being a slow, steady rise of tension and the continual addition of complications, always building the conflict and potential consequences, until release: climax and conclusion. Keeping the reader interested in both plot and characters over 350+ thousand words shows great skill on the part of the author. But what impressed me most about _Noble House_ were Clavelle's insights into the human condition: the fallible, fragile nature of both interpersonal and professional relationships; the overpowering lure of greed and lust; the strong contrasts in eastern and western thought processes. Besides the (literally) enormous entertainment found herein, the cultural and socio-political information in itself makes _Noble House_ a worthy read.

Interestingly, Claville predicts the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union by detailing the basic flaw in their world policy: spending vast amounts of borrowed capital on military and subversive activities while the infrastructure of the country crumbled away thanks in no small part to poor maintenance and the stifling of innovation. Given that this book was written in 1981, during one of the peaks of the so-called "cold war," Clavelle's hints and insinuations resonate with a twenty-first-century hindsight.

Recommended.

I am not sure why, or how, so many typographical errors crept into the Kindle edition. For some examples, many words, lines, or parts of whole pages appear in bold type or italics in the Kindle edition but are not that way in the printed edition. There are also missing quotation marks, especially the end-quote marks. There are misplaced lines, apparently due to missing carriage returns. I enjoyed the story but the print flaws are just annoying. Please, Amazon, if you are going to charge so much for these electronic books, put a little quality into the product.

Noble House is a book that captures the essence of Hong Kong as the adventurers in all of us imagine it: a hot bed of passion, murder, and intrigue. Clavell was a pioneer in fiction about old Asia, and arguably, this is the best example of his work.

I found this book to be extreemly satifying and the conclusion of the book left me a bit sad; I didn't want the tale to end! Noble house is THAT kind of book. The characters all seems extremely vivid and capture the imagination, especially the Taipan of the Noble House, a role that Pierce Brosnan performs beautifully in the movie performance of this classic.

Recent novels which have attempted to describe Hong Kong and its people have been mediocre at best; many books simply are so far removed from the truth as to be laughable. Yet even here in Asia, Clavell and Noble House have captured a following which attestes to its authenticity and flavour. I can say nothing more than to ask you to read this epic novel and share the enjoyment that many ahve already experienced.

Many years back I happened upon the book 'Taipan' in a used bookstore in Berkeley. Little did I know then that I was about to embarc upon a fictional journey that would span the centuries as well as generations. 'Noble House' the somewhat sequel to Taipan is set in Hong Kong of the sixties and where the battle between the Straun and Brock families continue to wage not their sabres and cutlasses but clout and money in a ceaseless endeavor to dominate, or even demolish one another.

Clavell a master storyteller in this and his other epics, but here he plays upon classic battle between families and offers an expose' into the world of the Orient, and those who would venture into this realm of mystique and beauty.

Bottomline: Read Taipan before Noble House ...Or you'll be completely lost

Noble House is, quite simply, one of the five most enjoyable books I've ever read, and re-read, and re-read, and . . . you get the picture. Clavell has taken the wonderful foundation of Tai-Pan and Shogun and added new levels of depth and complexity. At the beginning of the novel, young Ian Dunross assumes the mantle of Tai-Pan of the Noble House of Struan during a dark and stormy night and a dark and stormy period for the Noble House. The company's holdings are stretched to the limit, and that very night it loses a shipment of valuable contraband at sea. Dunross, heir to the title of Tai-Pan, or supreme leader, is also the kindred spirit to the company's founder, Dirk Struan, the legendary pirate, smuggler, and founder of the Noble House and Hong Kong. Dunross has also inherited the enduring hatred of the family's historical enemies, the Brocks, now personified in Quillan Gornt, head of the Second House. Gornt, a worthy adversary, has his own designs to topple Struan's and take over as the Noble House. But so does everybody else in the novel, it seems, unless the characters are interested in international espionage involving the Soviet Union, Communist China, the United States, or good old England. Triple agents, royalty, thieves, kidnappers, murderers, gangsters, and businessmen rub shoulders in this tempest in the teapot of Hong Kong. The key variables in this play are two Americans on a business trip, who hold the key to finiancial success in Hong Kong. Linc Bartlett is CEO, and his right-hand man is the beautiful woman, K.C. Tcholok. The Americans' ignorance of Hong Kong customs reflects the reader's, and injects a considerable amount of humor into the novel. But, as with Clavell's first novel (Tai-Pan), the center of attention remains the tai-pan. Ian Dunross is the personification of what is good in the British Empire, even though he is as ruthless as they come. He guides the Noble House through a minefield without a map, using his business acumen, guts, and joss to see him through. A climactic ending to an epic story of love, business, and war is immensely satisfying, and leaves you begging for more (just like Tai-Pan, Shogun, and King Rat did before). A must-read!