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Yes, some very good passages and a diverse set of characters.
Some interesting similarities to me:
The Ibis carries the stains of her previous career - “Jodu became aware of a sickly, fetid odour, welling upwards from the darkness below: it was a smell that was at once offensive and disturbing, familiar and unrecognizable, and it became stronger as he descended.”
Deeti’s visit to the opium factory - “The air inside was hot and fetid, like that of a closed kitchen, except that the smell was not of spices and oil, but of liquid opium, mixed with the dull stench of sweat – a reek so powerful that she had to pinch her nose to keep herself from gagging. No sooner had she steadied herself, than her eyes were met by a startling sight – a host of dark, legless torsos was circling around and around, like some enslaved tribe of demons.”
The departure for Mauritius with the cargo of indentured labour “The leaden gloom, combined with the midday heat and the fetid stench of hundreds of enclosed bodies, gave the unstirred air a weight like that of sewage: it took an effort even to draw breath.”
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