Amsterdam is on its knees; our shipyards are idle; our manufactories silent; our granaries plundered; The Hague is a stage of prancing marionettes tweaked by Paris; Prussian jackals and Austrian wolves laugh at our borders: and Jesus in heaven, since the bird-shoot at Kamperduin we are left a maritime nation with no navy. The British seized the Cape, Coromandel, and Ceylon without so much as a kiss-my-arse, and that Java itself is their next fattened Christmas goose is plain as day!This is a very engaging historical novel set in the late 1700s and early 1800s in Japan. It is a complex story with many levels within the fantastic tale. Mitchell is a superb writer who displays wonderful talent and an ability to dive into the time period convincingly. This book is everything you can hope for in a historical novel: intriguing characters, an exotic time and place, and unfolding mysteries.
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