Empress Orchid by Anchee Min

To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor’s wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate façade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor’s son.

Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress.

Now I absolutely loved this book, Anchee Min is one of those rare and amazing writers who can literally transport you into the book and the characters become so real that I found myself thinking about what was going on in the Forbidden City whilst I wasn't even reading. The aspect that I really enjoyed with this book is that it is a fictional story with fictional characters which are based around historic happens of China at that time period. In fact that actual story of China's last Empress is true and Min has given her life once again. The real Empress was called Empress Dowager Tsu His and she ruled from 1856 to 1908 - she apparently is one of those historical figures that people love to be nasty about. After her death people were already portraying her as a psychopathic nymphomaniac and ever since many western biographers have gleefully wallowed in allegations of her badness: her extravagance, her conservatism and her ruthless disposal of inconvenient political opponents. This version of events in Min's story gives readers an insight into a woman's life in the forbidden city and her struggle to not only stay alive, but with her son as regent, to lead an empire already on its final legs. Min's amazing and detailed research into accounts and stories from the lives of eunuchs, maids, palace tutors, Imperial warlords, and generals gives the reader not only a wonderful story but also an insight into exactly how difficult it was must have been for Tsu His and how her actions led to her being known as the woman who led China to it's downfall.

"Anchee Min's exquisite new novel unfolds like a ribbon of gleaming, luminous silk — soothing in its beauty, mesmerizing in its variations, startling, delightful and ultimately transformative in a way that only the best works of art can aspire to be . . . an astonishing journey into China's recent past." — Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A magnificent book: consequential; significant; beautiful. The book has everything in its favor. The story is gripping. The style is simple and graceful. The themes — love, war, conquest, domination, violence, feminism, communism, individualism and power — are sweeping . . . The true heroine is writer Anchee Min." — San Diego Union-Tribune

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