James Clavell's Asian Saga

hey has any1 read any or all of these books?
they're
King Rat (1962): Set in a Japanese POW camp, 1945
Tai-Pan (1966): Set in Hong Kong, 1841
Shogun (1975): Set in feudal Japan, 1600
Noble House (1981): Set in Hong Kong, 1963
Whirlwind (1986): Set in Iran, 1979
Gai-Jin

i've only read shogun (my fave), taipan (ok), noble house (pretty good but a bit hard to follow all the intricate plots) and half of gai-jin before i got ocompletely buggered by the plot developments.
they're pretty good in terms of political cloak and dagger and human nature, but man i rememba reading them at school and only shogun intereted me enough to rereda it all over again.
ad noble house also.
i recommend these books if ur lookin at a career in finance or politics.
really intirguing stuff.
shogun FTW

Shogun is absolutely fascinating. It's the book who lead me to begin studying Japanese, 3 years ago. The romance between Blackthorn and Mariko is too Hollywood-like for my taste, and don't actually fit in bakufu-era Japan, but the rest is great.

i agree about the mariko-blackthorne relationship thing.
it just popped up out of nowhere; it woulda been good to have something develop beforehand rather than have the usual hollywood asian woman throwing herself at white man schtick.

i enjoyed the intricate politics of the shogunate world as well as the parts the portuguese and the jesuits played.
and this is like early renaissance, or late late medieval ages!

Indeed, the politics and the intrigue constituted the best parts of the novel. Too bad he changed the names of some daimyos, like Toyotomi Hideyoshi's son, Hideyori and shogun Tokugawa (Toranaga).

Yeah I think I read them all. King Rat and Tai-Pan are my favs I guess.

King Rat you could call Real Literature. Best POW story evah.

TaiPan was by far his best book, it set the tone for the rest. I even took my name from it.