After reading the summary, I expected a dark and twisted love story full of sex and sad moments. But "Peach Blossom Pavillion" is a surprisingly postive novel with few truly sad moments. And explicit sex was nowhere to be found either.The author's style definitely takes getting used to. It's extremely flowery, though that fits the time and place. Prostitutes are known as "flower girls" and brothels have poetic names like "Peach Blossom Pavillion". Nobody ever seems to call anything by its name - you don't "have sex", you "visit the Wu mountain"; there's no "penis", it's the "jade stalk", and so on. At times, those descriptions were pretty funny and definitely not something western ears/eyes are used to.You can't compare the life of a Ming Ji with that of a prostitute in this day and age. Aside from good looks and great skills in bed, entertainment in the traditional sense was very important. They have to be artists - painters, singers, musicians. I really enjoyed the descriptions of Xiang Xiang learning these art forms and how she entertained her guests with them. Of course she's a natural in all of them.I really enjoyed all the descriptions of every day life in Peach Blossom Pavillion. The author tried very hard - and succeeded - to create a whole world behind those walls. Though I can't judge how historically accurate these were, since I don't know nearly enough about the topic to comment on that. But it certainly felt pretty realistic.Unfortunately, the prologue successfully ruined any suspense for the story. It basically tells you how the story is going to end, so all that's left for you is finding out how exactly we came to that ending. That didn't make it boring, though.Other than that, there were a few too many completely coincidental coincidences, which were very convenient and provided some simple solutions.Sometimes I didn't particularly like Xiang Xiang. In the beginning, she was naive to a point where I started doubting her intelligence. Later, she made some decisions that I really didn't agree with either.To sum it up, "Peach Blossom Pavillion" is an interesting historical novel, that unfortunately lacks suspense. Four stars for a book with room for improvement, which was interesting nonetheless. I had great hope for this book and it started well but then seemed to forget where it was going. There was a very heavy use of euphemisms for everything to do with sex which got rather repetitive and the main character seemed to fade and just be plodding through a rather improbable story. I think I was expecting more about China and it's history instead it was OK but left me feeling it was all a bit of a missed opportunity.
What do You think about Peach Blossom Pavilion (2014)?
If you have a Kindle, do a word count on "fuck" and "cock" before you commit to reading this.
—Ashi
Beautifully written novel, well worth the read.
—pari
