This book was unfortunately rather bad. It was full of cliched characters, so-so plot twists and offensive racial stereotyping. There seems to be little attempt to explore the culture and plenty of ways in which it exploits it. Clavell introduces all the possible racial stereotypes he can e.g. the beautiful, lustful French woman, the suicidal Japanese spy, the greedy and conniving Chinese servants, the upright English man. The list goes on. Some of the dialogue appears to be straight from a B movie. As an Asian, I felt quite offended by certain sections of the novel.