From Publishers Weekly
The confusion and chaos of China in the third century B.C. percolates throughout French sinologist Levi's second novel, in deliberate contrast to the portrait of the austerely ordered world third-century B.C. China presented in the author's Prix de Goncourt-winning The Chinese Emperor. Whet-Iron, the eventual founder of the Han dynasty, struggles with his rival Plume to assert his power after the fall of the Ch'in order. An unlikely victor, Whet-Iron is neither particularly talented nor shrewd; addressing the riddle of Whet-Iron's victory, Levi attributes his success to fate, a vehicle represented here by hexagrams taken from the I Ching. The intellectual underpinnings of this novel are unassailable, but the historical turbulence and disorder that Levi hopes to convey spill over into the narrative itself--a profusion of minor characters and minor story lines floods the work. Levi demands much of his readers, and his rewards may not justify their efforts.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
History as foretold by the I Ching and as dreamed by Confucius collides with the reality of ancient China--in this sequel to French writer L‚vi's Goncourt prize-winning The Chinese Emperor (1987). Tired of the cruel age of metal instituted by the austere emperor Chin, third-century B.C. Chinese yearn for a wise and compassionate ruler who will inaugurate an age of peace and prosperity. And just such a man has been foretold in the hexagrams of I Ching as well as dreamed by Confucius, who foresaw a commoner known as Whet-Iron rising to the dragon throne. In chapters headed by quotations from the hexagrams, the fulfilling of the dream and the prophecies begins as young Whet-Iron, whose mother was impregnated by a dragon, embarks upon his inexorable rise to imperial glory. He has an inauspicious start as a corrupt local police chief, but he's soon transformed in such ways as to gain recognition as a leader. Whet-Iron, who has his own reasons for believing in his eventual greatness, removes the Chin dynasty's emperor--with help from a slew of self-servers, loyalists, and idealists--but has to contend with the equally ambitious Plume. The two men and their armies devastate the country as they fight, and though Whet-Iron is ultimately successful, he turns out to be ``not the kind of compassionate ruler who would bring about the reign of Heaven on Earth.'' He might introduce ritual based on Confucianism, but in the end he was merely ``the steel that slashes and cuts to strengthen the trunk of Authority. As it must be, and always will be.'' Dreams deceive, prophecies only half-explain, reality is all. An age-old political lesson taught with insight and imagination, but lost sometimes in the hurly-burly of an incident- glutted plot and a confusion of characters. Subtle, if perhaps too subtle at times. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
