From the very beginning this book, published in China in 1992, read to me almost exactly like the 1987 Oscar winning film The Last Emperor. And while I hesitate to accuse anyone of plagiarism, I have to wonder if this is a case of blatantly stolen ideas.
In this book, a 14 year old boy becomes ruler of a fictional Chinese empire, enjoying near omnipotence despite his lack of intelligence and maturity. He finds himself being controlled by the women in his family, and commits outrageous acts as much to defy them in some way as to test the limits of his powers. He is the target of numerous assassination attempts. He knows very little about ruling a nation, finding comfort only in his pet crickets and a slave devoted to the point of absolute degradation. In the end this emperor finds himself a commoner after all, poking through the ruins of a palace that was once his, and finding the old cricket jars he owned as a boy monarch. Sound familiar?
In spite of the questionable similarities, I did enjoy this book. It was very well written and engrossing, and I will definitely be looking for more from Tong, although as I read I will wonder about the originality of the content.
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I didn't realize that China it was a lack of copyright laws, as I thought it was a lack of enforcing them. Certainly makes you wonder!
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