Continuing to work my way through James Clavell’s oeuvre, I spent Holy Week working my way through Noble House. I use the expression “working my way” advisedly, as it was a bit of a slog—my least favorite Clavell to date.

Noble House is an immense book, with an immense cast. It takes place in just over a week; and it’s non-stop action the whole time. The basic premise is simple. The book is set in Hong Kong in the early 1960’s. Ian Dunross, a descendant of Dirk Struan and tai-pan of the Noble House. As the week begins, he’s considering a business deal with two Americans, Linc Bartlett and K.C. Tcholok, that will give the Noble House a presence in the New World. For their part, Bartlett and Tcholok will gladly take over the Noble House if they can, and are also in discussions with the interestingly named Quillan Gornt, the descendant of Dirk Struan’s old nemesis Tyler Brock. Gornt is encouraged to trigger a long-laid plan to destroy the Noble House. The whole drama plays out over the next week, against a background of spies (both Russian and Chinese), pirates, drug smugglers, banking, trade, fires, mudslides, torture, and lots of not particularly graphic sex.

It’s amazing how a book that covers so short a period of time can move so slowly. At about half-way through, I was strongly tempted just to move on to something else. At about that point, though, Clavell began to pay off some of the mysteries raised earlier in the book, and I got interested again.

Noble House is not a bad book; and amazingly, Clavell really does tie up all the loose ends and bring everything to a satisfying conclusion. And there are other inducements to read it, because he ties together all of his other books. It is a direct sequel to Tai-Pan, of course; Peter Marlowe of King Rat is a minor but significant character; and we even meet a descendant of the Anjin-San from Shogun. The theme of “going native” is still present, though somewhat muted, and there’s so much going on, and so many characters, that it’s a hard book to come to grips with. On top of that, the ’60’s is recent enough that (for me, at least) it doesn’t have that historical novel flavor that I enjoyed with the others.

So read Shogun; read King Rat; read Tai-Pan; if you like ’em, you might give Noble House a try. But don’t start with it.