China Star

I started out by reading books by Wilbur Smith, the greatest historical fiction writer out today. His website referred me to Bartle Bull as a close second, and that was an understatement. If they can both be number one it'd be great, but, alas, there can only be one. At this point I have read all there is in print from both authors and can say without a doubt that they both evoke the heart pounding realism of what was Africa. Their prose puts you right there, right inside the eyes of the character, right in front of the action and the history of Africa. I can think of no greater feeling that what I get while reading their stories. Hale me hearties, tis death that is universal to man, all of us die, but some of us never live.

A short review. You will travel with the characters across the globe, in romance, drinking gin and vodka, hunting and horse racing. Witness friendship and murder. Learn of the tea trade, violent revolutionary socialism, opium drug addiction. Fine antiquity auctions plus so much more. Wow, what an adventure. I would advise reading the two books.

I first came to the British adventure novelist Bartle Bull through his African trilogy ("The White Rhino Hotel," "The Cafe on the Nile," and "The Devil's Oasis"). Bull wrote of a fading vision of the European playground in northern Africa - a paean to the romantic life of his father and so many other Brits with restless souls. These novels had a formula that could be summed up as high adventure, glorious sex, and dastardly murder . . . basically an 'R' rated "Indiana Jones" set of thrills and chills. And they were great. With "Shanghai Station," Bull sent his focus to the East - Russia and China - and the story became a bit darker. Alexander "Sasha" Karlov is the shining son of an aristocratic White Russian family fleeing the chaos of the Bolshevik Revolution. Their only destination is the teeming seaport of Shanghai, as colorful a locale as any writer could hope for. This story gave Bull the opportunity for more high adventure, glorious sex, and dastardly murder. But all of this was tempered in part by the rage of his villain, Victor Polyak, a Bolshevik Commissar and flat-out stone cold murderer. Polyak kills Sasha's parents and kidnaps and rapes his twin sister, Katia. In a classic "there-will-be-a-sequel" ending, a bitter fight between Karlov and Polyak ends with Karlov wounded but convinced that Polyak must be dead because all that is left of him is his severed hand. Of course, Polyak is not dead, but only more lethal - now armed with an evil set of hooks where his hand used to be. In "China Star," Polyak tries to track down Karlov and exact his revenge. But Karlov is a beloved figure with friends everywhere, including the highest tiers of the criminal element in Shanghai. Polyak first tries to get Karlov in Paris, but fails and must watch as Karlov reunites with his twin sister, Katia, now a Cheka assassin and mother to Polyak's son Leon. (Leon, natch, is being held hostage in the finest Bolshevik tradition.) In a plot that whisks from Paris to Cairo to Ceylon to Shanghai, Karlov, Katia, and their friends and lovers face death and triumph at every turn. Fortunes are made and lost, friendships forged, and lives snuffed out on almost every page - that is, when Bull isn't offering delightful passages detailing the exotic scenery or stirring bouts of sexual adventure. Perhaps most enjoyably, Karlov finds time to make a quick but lasting friendship with Bull's most enjoyable literary creation, the Goan dwarf entreprenuer, Olivio Fonseca Alevedo, who is just starting up the infamous Cafe on the Nile. Bull offers up thrills and chills galore, including some of the most exotic death scenes and love scenes imaginable. Pure, glorious pulp entertainment of the highest order, "China Star" cannot be described as great fiction by any means, but a fantastic guilty pleasure. The only reason it does not get five stars is that there are a couple of incidents that are so dependent on coincidence that disbelief cannot be sustained. But

This is a great read full of fascinating historical facts. China Star would make a great Merchant Ivory film. In fact, they should have made this book into a film instead of White Countess. I have read all of Bartle Bull's books and highly recommend them for those that love the exotic locales of the Middle East, Africa and Asia in the first half of the 20th century. He is a master story teller with a great sense of humour and a brilliant grasp of historical facts.

Bartle Bull writes exotic adventure tales, five of them to date: an African trilogy and now two novels about the adventures of young Alexander Karlov, a White Russian nobleman, footloose after the fall of Russia to the Bolsheviks. All the books are worth reading as exemplars of intelligent adventure novels. "China Star" is a tale of Karlov's search for his lost twin sister, and the efforts of a savage and repulsive Bolshevik to effect his assassination through various nefarious means. The story begins in Paris, and then continues on a long steamer ride through Egypt, Sri Lanka, and back to Karlov's home in Shanghai. Bull gets high marks for atmosphere, research, and accuracy in the exotic places and scenes he describes. In this book, for example, we get interesting descriptions of the cotton market in Egypt, tea growing in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and the White Russian community in Paris in 1922. I don't give this novel top rating because it is too long and contrived. In the course of the novel, the repulsive Bolshevik makes innumerable attempts to kill young Alexander -- far too many for plausibility. It would have been better to have cut the number of action scenes down to two or three. Furthermore, the author spends too much time in scenes in which Alexander demonstrates his prowess in bed. Alexander's impressive skills with women could be demonstrated adequately in fewer words and lesser numbers of bedtime jousts. One has the feeling that the author felt compelled to write a novel of over 400 pages and padded it. It would have been a better story if cut to 250 or 300 pages -- and nothing of importance would have been omitted. So, read Bull and enjoy the descriptions of strange lands and exotic people, but be prepared to be irritated at the slow pace of the story. Smallchief