Elephants and Concubines
Feb. 16th, 2025 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Last Concubine by Lesley Downer is a historical romance novel, set in Japan in the 1860s, following Sachi, who is sent to the Shogun's palace at the age of fifteen and briefly becomes his concubine.
This book is a very weird mix of a lot happening and nothing happening... The overall events of the first 200 pages would probably be enough to fill a whole novel, but then it carries on for another 400 pages! I liked Sachi as a character and found her engaging and sympathetic - but the book very much happens to her, with her having very little agency and very seldom taking direct action. There's also an awful lot of internalised misogyny, with frequent references to her being 'only a woman' and therefore not able to make decisions about her life or control her fate in any way. Which is likely very realistic for the time - but doesn't always make for a particularly compelling story.
The romance aspects were well done, though - with several unexpected twists and turns - and a satisfying eventual conclusion. I also appreciated the way the ending looked towards the future with hope for change.
Stomp the Plank is a very silly game, in which you balance elephant characters on planks extending out from a ship, and then push your luck to see who will be the first to fall in the water. Treasure cards are turned over, and you either get to put weights on the end of the other players' planks or you have to move your elephant further out over the water, depending on whether you get a duplicate card. There's a certain amount of skill in deciding when to stop - but you're also largely at the whim of the randomness of the cards. Each round only take a few minutes - and it stops when the first elephant falls (rather than players having to sit out while other continue) - but I lost three times in a row, so it wasn't my best game ever.
This book is a very weird mix of a lot happening and nothing happening... The overall events of the first 200 pages would probably be enough to fill a whole novel, but then it carries on for another 400 pages! I liked Sachi as a character and found her engaging and sympathetic - but the book very much happens to her, with her having very little agency and very seldom taking direct action. There's also an awful lot of internalised misogyny, with frequent references to her being 'only a woman' and therefore not able to make decisions about her life or control her fate in any way. Which is likely very realistic for the time - but doesn't always make for a particularly compelling story.
The romance aspects were well done, though - with several unexpected twists and turns - and a satisfying eventual conclusion. I also appreciated the way the ending looked towards the future with hope for change.
Stomp the Plank is a very silly game, in which you balance elephant characters on planks extending out from a ship, and then push your luck to see who will be the first to fall in the water. Treasure cards are turned over, and you either get to put weights on the end of the other players' planks or you have to move your elephant further out over the water, depending on whether you get a duplicate card. There's a certain amount of skill in deciding when to stop - but you're also largely at the whim of the randomness of the cards. Each round only take a few minutes - and it stops when the first elephant falls (rather than players having to sit out while other continue) - but I lost three times in a row, so it wasn't my best game ever.
