Ghosh does an amazing job weaving together the storylines of close to a dozen very different characters (Indian and English men and women from every walk of life) in his saga of life in India (then a part of the British Empire) during the time directly leading up to the Opium Wars in China. In the final third of the book, most of these characters end up as inhabitants of the same ship making its way to an island off the African coast.

While Ghosh's writing is lyrical in many parts, I do have to admit that I had trouble with some of the passages when he used hard-to-dicipher dialects.

And though I kept reading to the end because I wanted to know what would happen to the characters I had grown to care for, it did, at times, feel like homework.

Apparently this is the first in a planned trilogy, so there will be more homework coming my way! ( )

This is, in many ways, an old fashioned novel, almost Dickensian, very plot driven with a multitude of original and unusual characters, all of whom face many tribulations. The main characters,Deeti and Zachary Reid, don't connect until the last page, but their storeis are intertwined. Each is an outcast from mainstream society, he because he is a mulatto from New Orleans in the early 19th century, and she because she is a woman in rural India, a victim, so to speak, of an arranged marriage. Both overcome enormous obstacles in their respective quests. There is adventure, swashbuckling, blood, death, hope, and gut aplenty, but it never gets absurd. A very good read that takes you back in time to a culture utterly unlike our own, and also takes you aboard a sailing ship and the world of opium trade. ( )

Oh! How I wish that my copy of Sea of Poppies had come with a glossary! As it is, I feel that I have lost a great deal of the pleasure in not being able to understand all of the various pidgin language combinations spoken by the sprawling cast of characters. On the other hand, I got enough to appreciate the novel itself thoroughly. I haven't read The White Tiger, but it's hard to see how it could be better than this book.

This is the first volume of a trilogy and most of the narrative is used to introduce the characters and show how they end up leaving India on Ibis, a refurbished slaver now carrying opium to China in 1838. I was reminded of the structure of The Fellowship of the Ring as the disparate group comes to depend on each other for their lives, and as they separate at the end of this volume. Like other fans, I think that Ghosh should hurry to get the next in the series on the market. ( )

I liked this story because it is about the breakdown of the caste system in India and has links with the class system and oppression as it existed at that time around the world. The context for the story is the beginnings of the Opium Wars - taking in the international relationships between the Indian Aristocracy and the values of mother England, the Indian royalty themselves and the Chinese.

In the characters we are introduced to; Deeti ( the lowly Indian peasant), The Raja (Neel), Zachary (the mestizo American Indian), Jodul and Paulette are all in tenuous social positions - their place in the world - their rights, questioned by the powers that be. However the upheaval that is bought to bear on their world by the refusal of China to allow the Opium trade to continue offers up the hope that they can all break free of the oppressions that has marked them and seek you lives steeped in principles of egalitarian.
This is the hope that rides with Ibis as she sets sail and which haves you hankering for more of the story of these characters who you have just come to know in this first of the trilogy to come.

Amitav full scorn comes to rest on the arroagance of the British establishement in India and their supporters in England. His view of history, proabably painfully spot on, shows them, like the religious despots our history, justifying violence and oppression on the grounds of some trumped up higher ground which through the passage of time now clearly shows itself as a most henious ruse. ( )

Sea of Poppies is a fantastic page-turner. Set in India in the 1830's, this novel tells the story of a disparate group that board the Ibis as it sets sail for the island of Mauritius to deliver Coolies-indentured servants. Under British colonization, opium, sadly, influences the lives of many-- from the lower caste farmers to addicts to merchants and sailors, and leads ultimately to trade disputes and war between the British Empire and China. Never has the English language (with its Hindi influence) been more fun to read. Do not be put off by the difficult and unusual slang of the sailors (it appears early on but not frequently throughout the book). Their strange argot reminds me of the unique language of A Clockwork Orange--you won't always understand what they're saying, but it is bizarre and colorful(often naughty) and is appreciated within the author's capable context. This is the 1st of a proposed trilogy. A love story of mismatched castes, a Raja brought low, a "black" American first shipmate, a French orphan, even a man channeling a mystic woman, and many others- all of whom I've come to care deeply about-- I can't wait to read the next installments from the amazingly talented Amitav Ghosh. ( )