". . . flat, immense horizon with no foreseeable vanishing point . . . dunes of golden sand . . . robust, curvaceous women; sleeping dragons; even ruined cities with long-forgotten names . . . in a cobolt blue sky, a few clouds swam like shiny white fish and exotic birds chirped their shamanic chants . . . Not a car or truck was in sight. For thousands of years, these same sands, like huge whales, had swallowed caravans entire---merchants, wives, children, camels, goods for sale, everything . . . Over the centuries, desert explorers . . . met horrible deaths from thirst, heatstroke, starvation, sandstorms, bandit attacks, poisonous snakes, even demons. It was told that in the Tang dynasty, merchants and adventurers could simply follow the trail of skeletons . . ." (page 222, advanced reading copy)Mingmei Yip has created some of the most memorable characters I've come across in fiction. I absolutely love this passage describing Lily's first meeting with the herbalist Lop Nor:
"The creases on his forehead read like abstruse philosophical truths etched in an esoteric language waiting to be deciphered . . . His eyes, though sad, also emanated strong yang energy. However, what really caught my attention and made my heart ache were his hands---large, brown, leathery, scarred. His fingers were thick, calloused, tipped with nails lined with faint dark ridges. What had this man done with those hands---just collecting herbs on the mountain, or digging graves to house ghosts?" (page 74, advanced reading copy)My only complaint about SONG OF THE SILK ROAD is the author's too frequent use of the F-word. For me, it rendered scenes that could have been luxuriously sensual to being clinical at best and crass at worst. Perhaps it was meant to reveal a frank and open attitude toward sexuality, but I found the overuse of the word to be clunky in comparison to the refinement and sensitivity of other passages.
"All that talk of snakes adopting human form reminded me of a story I once did about a conspiracy theorist named David Icke, who believed that the secret rulers of the world were giant, blood-drinking, child-sacrificing lizards who had shape-shifted into humans so they could perform their evil on an unsuspecting population. I suddenly realized how similar the two stories were, except in this one the people who spoke of snakes in suits were eminent and utterly sane psychologists, respected around the world."
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