So finally I've managed to finish it - it took me a long time simply because I still find it quite hard this year to find time for reading: the book definitely flows!
Having said that, although I did enjoy it, I also had very many eye-rolling moments:
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Originally Posted by sun surfer
there are many small assumptions on the author's part throughout. This sort of thing normally makes me wary in factual non-fiction, but before voting I'd read a sample and didn't find it bothersome. I think her skill at writing an engaging story and her thorough research more than make up for it - or, at least, that's what I think from the part I've gotten through so far anyway.
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Originally Posted by sun surfer
It doesn't make sense. If she ruled with the red ink stamps, then how were the others able to have her eunuch lover executed? Couldn't she have just made a decree with the stamp?
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Originally Posted by issybird
That said, Chang still lost me. Part of this was her fangirlish style. It didn’t read like serious history, but more like a high school theme with all the passion and blindness to alternative theories that implies. Ultimately, it was just silly. In overselling her case, she undermined it.
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Some of the book was unintentionally amusing, as Chang tried to avoid her own entanglements. I loved how it was ok because Cixi didn’t steal a lot of money from the Navy, only a little. And there was no way, given her biases, that Chang could make sense of Cixi’s agency in the Boxer Rebellion.
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very much agree with all of the above: and I wish Chang had given us more in terms of historical background to what was going on in the rest of society: in this respect I think I got more out of Pearl Buck than this book. In short, I was disappointed: I too know very little about China and its history, but even so there are obvious gaps and sudden changes of direction which simply make no sense, and left me with the feeling I had missed some important, sizeable chunk somewhere. Cixi's attitudes to her people, as well as her people attitude towards her, change suddenly and with no apparent reason: of course I get this is not even aiming at being scholarly work, but it still left me rather dissatisfied, at least compared to what it could have been. Mind you, I did enjoy it, but I think Chang could have done much more with it...