"A work that makes you feel"

In the middle of the nineteenth century, seventeen years old Orchid accompanies her aristocratic clan to Beijing to inter her deceased father. Meanwhile the Emperor Hsien Feng decrees that he seeks a wife who must have royal blood so that the offspring are purebred Manchu. Though related to the Manchus, her family faces poverty until Hsien surprisingly selects Orchid.

As her clan's situation improves considerably from the Emperor's gifts, Orchid resides in a boring luxurious lifestyle in the Forbidden City in which she can trust no one. Beginning to understand how to secure her tentative position, Orchid becomes determined to birth the heir, which she cleverly accomplishes. As the western imperialists carve up China, Hsien dies leaving his five year old son begat with Orchid as the Emperor, but he is too young to rule. His mother is his only hope to survive in a Machiavellian sea of duplicity and changing loyalties in which no one can be trusted.

This is a vibrant fascinating historical fiction tale of China's last Empress. The story line is over-loaded with so much detail that fans who appreciate intrinsic depth into a bygone era will want to read the EMPRESS ORCHID. However, the profundity of each elaborate description of court life and the Forbidden City in the late 1800s also tends to slow down the action in which intrigue and executions are the norm. Those who enjoy historical sociology as the prime theme will cherish Anchee Min's tale, but those who want to swim in the shark infested pool will find this first person account too slow.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted January 15, 2004

Summary

The setting is China's Forbidden City in the last days of its imperial glory, a vast complex of palaces and gardens run by thousands of eunuchs and encircled by a wall in the center of Peking. In this highly ordered place -- tradition- bound, ruled by strict etiquette, rife with political and erotic tension -- the Emperor, "the Son of Heaven," performs two duties: he must rule the court and conceive an heir. To achieve the latter, tradition provides a stupendous hierarchy of hundreds of wives and concubines. It is as a minor concubine that the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid as a girl, enters the Forbidden City at the age of seventeen. It is not a good time to enter the city. The Ch'ing Dynasty in 1852 has lost its vitality, and the court has become an insular, xenophobic place. A few short decades earlier, China lost the Opium Wars, and it has done little since to strengthen its defenses or improve diplomatic ties. Instead, the inner circle has turned further inward, naively confident that its troubles are past and the glory of China will keep the "barbarians" -- the outsiders -- at bay. Within the walls of the Forbidden City the consequences of a misstep are deadly. As one of hundreds of women vying for the attention of the Emperor, Orchid soon discovers that she must take matters into her own hands. After training herself in the art of pleasing a man, she bribes her way into the royal bedchamber and seduces the monarch. A grand love affair ensues; the Emperor is a troubled man, but their love is passionate and genuine. Orchid has the great good fortune to bear him a son. Elevated to the rank of Empress, she still must struggle to maintain her position and the right to raise her own child. With the death of the Emperor comes a palace coup that ultimately thrusts Orchid into power, although only as regent until her son's maturity. Now she must rule China as its walls tumble around her, and she alone seems capable of holding the country together. This is an epic story firmly in the mold of Anchee Min"s Becoming Madame Mao. Like that best-selling historical novel, the heroine of Empress Orchid comes down to us with a diabolical reputation -- a woman who seized power through sexual seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. But reality tells a different story. Based on copious research, this is a vivid portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived in a male world, a woman whose main struggle was not to hold on to power but to her own humanity. Richly detailed and completely gripping, Empress Orchid is a novel of high drama and lyricism and the first volume of a trilogy about the life of one of the most important women in history.