Marta's Reviews > Jade Dragon Mountain

This delicious blend of historical fiction and mystery is both entertaining and edifying. I crave escape nowadays into other worlds in space and time, and how can it be more fascinating than a trip to 18th century China, involving astronomy, treachery and murder?

China in 1708 was ruled by the Manchu emperor Kangxi, the longest reigning Chinese emperor. The emperor had absolute power and was worshipped as living god. One of his divine powers was the predicting of astronomical phenomena such as eclipses. (I did not know this and found it fascinating.) Elsa Hart put this historical tidbit into the heart of this mystery.

Now, the emperor might be divine, but he relies on his astronomers to make his star charts. Which is how the only foreigners allowed within the strictly closed borders are the Jesuits. Emperor Kangxi cares very little about the Christian faith - but is very impressed with learning and science - especially with astronomical projections. This brings a delicacy to the Jesuits’ presence: while they are highly valued, officially their work does not exist - the emperor predicts using his own divine power.

The China of the time and its people are magnificiently drawn. We meet self-important, carreer- and reputation-conscious bureaucrats; a talented woman maneuvering to keep her position as first consort; the Jesuits living in China; and the emperor himself, who proves to be a formidable intellect and a fair judge, in addition to his immense power. Our main character, Li Du, is an exiled former librarian, perfectly positioning him as both a humble and learned outsider but with a wealth of insider knowledge and a keen analytical mind. Hamza, the amiable storyteller allowes Hart to weave numerous Arabian Night’s tales into the story, giving it a meta-fiction character.

The tone of the book shifts between poetic when describing landscapes and scenes in life, tension-filled in action, and mysterious when Hamza recites his stories. I enjoyed the writing, which gives homage to Chinese poetry and art in its metaphors and language.

I have listened to it twice because I kept putting off writing the review, and I decided it was better the second time, even though I knew the solution. In audio I lose a lot of detail and I enjoyed getting the finer points that I missed on first listen. In this book, the setting is the most important.

The audio is free on Hoopla for those with access through their library. Narrator David Shih is adequate but not great, nevertheless he brings out the lyrical qualities of the writing well, even if his characters are somewhat flat.