The Last Empress

January 1, 2007
Min's Empress Orchid
tracked the concubine Orchid's path to becoming Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi; this revisionist look at her long years behind her son Tung Chih's throne (1863–1908) won't disappoint Orchid's fans. Recounted through Tzu Hsi's first-person, the early chapters encompass her trials as a young "widow," as co-regent with the late emperor's wife and as a mother. An engaging domestic drama gives way to pedestrian political history; Tzu Hsi lectures like a popular historian on palace intrigue, military coups, the Boxer Rebellion and conflicts with Russia, France and Japan. Though tears flow, there is little passion (save Tzu Hsi's erotic but chaste longing for Yung Lu, commander of the emperor's troops). Min's empress adopts a notably modern psychologizing tone ("How much was Guang-hsu affected when he was wrenched from the family nest?"), earthy language ("You are the most wretched fucking demon I know!") and notes of historical prescience (including what "future critics" will say). Min attacks the popular conception of Tzu Hsi as a corrupt, ruthless, power-hungry assassin, but the results read less like a novel than a didactic memoir.

In Min's first book, EMPRESS ORCHID, Alexandra O'Karma portrayed a 17-year-old concubine whose feisty temperament gained her entrance to the bed of the emperor and put her in a powerful position. Now Empress Tzu Hsi, who is based on a real-life nineteenth-century figure, is middle-aged, and O'Karma's voice portrait is mature and weary. This makes more and more sense as Empress Orchid ages and faces nonstop personal and political stresses. She gives up the man she loves, sees her birth son die, and discovers her adopted son's weakness. Her impoverished government is under siege by foreign powers and is being attacked from within by warring factions. Despite all, O'Karma's delivery reveals the strength and caring of this fictionalized character in a portrait that, according to the author, attempts to "rehabilitate" history's vilifying picture of the Empress. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine