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This book was definately not fast reading, but is an in depth look at a family struggling to get by in an East Bay valley after the Gold Rush in California. Particularly close to my heart because of the vivid descriptions (which fit to a tee!) of the geography, weather, and vistas of that area, where I grew up. The reader gets so swept up in this family and its characters that you feel like a fly on the wall in their daily life.

I would like to say a thing or two about Sax Rohmer's final Fu Manchu novel, "Emperor Fu Manchu." This 13th Fu novel is unique in that it is the only one in the series that actually takes place in China. In this one, Nayland Smith and American agent Tony McKay try to rescue an entomologist from Fu's lair; stop the kidnapping of a German physicist; AND destroy a Russian germ warfare research station in the jungles of the Chinese wilderness. The book is kind of a half and half affair, as in the first part of the novel, all Smith and McKay seem to do is traipse back and forth around Szechuan province, from one rendezvous to another. But then the book really gets going, as our heroes penetrate Fu's lair and are shown the secret of the doctor's "Cold Men": the zombie army that Fu Manchu has resurrected from the dead. The finale of the book is actually quite suspenseful. However, the book does contain the usual Rohmeresque errors. For example, Fu's referring to the rat torture of book 2 ("The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu") as "the Seven Gates of Wisdom" instead of "the Six Gates of Wisdom"; Fu's comment that the goal of the Si-Fan is to overthrow Communism, when in previous books it was to overthrow the West in general and restore China to its former glory; the use of a peach tree as a landmark in one section of the book later turning into a pear tree(!); the ability of a character to discern another's eye color and skin color in a dark room; and so on. And howzabout this for a sentence: "...presently, she said, 'Were you angry with me for being such a liar?' she asked." Things like this can drive a reader to distraction. Sax Rohmer was a terrific writer of thrillers but, like most writers, his work needed copyediting, and I don't think it ever received such attention. His descriptions of geography throughout the entire series are problematic at best. In this book, for example, we are asked to picture a river that becomes a creek, joining up with a streamlike brook that becomes a miniature bay. Whew! Anyway, quibbles aside, this is a fun ending for the 13 Fu Manchu novels, a series that I highly recommend being read in consecutive order for maximum impact.