Sons (The Good Earth Trilogy Book 2) Kindle Edition

Sons is a winding, ponderous epic story about the relationships between fathers and sons- how there’s generational inheritance of traits and behaviors and how regardless of best intentions, parents can’t mold their children into what they dream for them. This wasn’t as easy a read as The Good Earth because the characters were to me, less sympathetic. One could understand their motivations, but at the same time, you couldn’t help but feel like none of them were very likable at even the most basic level. For this reason, I felt attached to no one- not Wang the Tiger nor his son Wang Yuan, nor any of the characters really. It was interesting to follow the history of revolution from one perspective, but it wasn’t the most enjoyable to spend hours with characters who are selfish, pig-headed and just not very pleasant in general.If you read the Kindle edition, “Sons” actually ends about 59% of the way through the book. There is an incredibly extended preview of the next book in the trilogy, “A House Divided,” following. And by extended, I mean for sure a third to half of that novel must be previewed on Kindle. For that reason, because I’ve been sucked into that preview by the eminently unlikable Wang Yuan, I suppose I will read the final book in the trilogy.

Back before Nixon went to China a person could pass as a China expert if they could speak archly about Who lost China? If they watched any of several mostly silly movies about the American Woman leading Chinese orphans somewhere. I am positive there were at least 3 of these. Or you could read Pearl S. Buck’s Nobel Prize winning The Good Earth. Later we might remember that China was the country with hoards of poorly lead warriors who charged into our guns in Korea.So influential was Buck’s book many of us had no idea she wrote many and that the Good Earth was part of a Trilogy. OK so maybe that was just me. I have now read several of her works including, Sons, Book 2 od the Earth Trilogy.Sons about wore me out. We meet the three sons of the aged and dying Wang Lung. Assuming his wealth and status are his 3 sons, Wang the Landlord, the pleasure loving lazy first son, Wang the Merchant the plain living money scrounger and Wang the Tiger the future war lord.The older brothers are married, so some women none of whom are particularly important to the plot . Except to remind us that the male dominated, traditional Chinese family was a mostly un guided household of people who found their way or did not. Mostly the paternal leader waited until some arbitrary point to take an interest in something in his household not himself.The youngest some slowly takes over the narrative as he at least is doing dramatic things. He is relative to his time and type a kindly up and coming war lord. He is ruthless and clever, but is willing to pay for his what his troops need and refuses them freedom to plunder the peasantry.Eventually he has a son and the narrative will turn to him.Buck makes it clear from early on this is unlikely to end with Happily Ever After. In fact, what would be happy for these mostly rudderless people following traditions to no particular purpose is a major point of the writer.At some point in this overly mannered novel I felt weighted down. It may have been built on traditional Chinese storytelling, but that aspect is not announced anywhere in this edition. Worse there seems to be a formulaic, almost pigeon English based no doubt on how people of this culture tended to think or write, but it slows things down and is mostly repetitious. The literary equivalent of fake Chinese Sing Song in the cheaper movies, only written out. At this book’s abrupt, cliff hanger ending I was going to stop, but my Kindle copy includes almost all of book 3 so I finished this extensive sample then read on to the end of book 3. Things there got a little better.

Sons is the sequel to The Good Earth, the second book in the trilogy. Wang Lung was a man who lived on the earth until he got rich enough to have tenants to do the labor. His sons saw themselves as rich and too good to live the life of a farmer. The oldest became a landlord but squandered his wealth on wine and women. The second son became a miserly merchant selling his grain and loaning his money for extraordinary prices even to his brothers. The third son became a War Lord making his brother's lives possible though that was not the source of his ambition. But as these men grew old, the changes in their country made the lives of their children both challenging and filed with new choices.I would recommend Sons to all Perl S. Buck fans and anyone interested in Chinese history. I rated it four stars because I thought Buck went a little overboard with her attempt to make the language sound as if the book were being translated from Chinese. It got a little annoying.

First and foremost, I have read two books by Pearl Buck (The Good Earth and The Three Daughters of Madam Liang) and loved them. I do not expect this work, "Sons," to disappoint even if for some reason I do not like it as well as the others. I anticipate an enjoyable read. What bothers me is the physical paperback "book" itself. This "book" was PRINTED (as evidenced by the date inide the back cover) and shipped the same day I bought it through AMZN. What is up with that? No Table of contents, no prologue, no copyright information, no biographical of the author, NOTHING. Open the front cover and there is Page 1 staring you in the face with it's bold and unusual font. There is something unsettling about this. When I read a book which I enjoy, I like to keep it. And I am not certain this can even be called a complete book. How did this happen? Nothing in the AMZN listing prepared me for this? Something unnatural about this printing and it gives me an uneasy feeling about where we might be heading with the beloved physical book.

I have just read the whole trilogy which was amazing. However this second book deals a lot with warfare which I found slightly less interesting than the other 2 books

Another fantastic book, a great read.

Marvellous writer

Too much repetition

A worthy member of the trilogy. I had problems with the download at first and thought I was going to miss out on this one. But a thorough re-charge of the Kindle ( and a bit of a rest), and there it was!A wonderful read.