Sons (The Good Earth Trilogy Book 2)

“Sons” centres around Wang Lung's third son, with the lives of the two elder brothers,boring and uninteresting as they are, playing only background roles in the story.As we read in “The Good Earth”, Wang Lung was a peasant farmer, born and brought up in poverty, in an earthen house on a meagre plot of farmland. Suffering unbelievable hardship and near starvation, he survives, and with hard work, luck, and cleverness, manages to put a few pieces of silver aside, bit by bit, and buys land. Eventually, he owns a lot of land, as well as a rich house in town, with courts and fine furnishings, and with his own servants and slaves.As his life draws to an end, he returns to his old earthen house, amidst his beloved fields, and to the primitive room where he slept as a young man. Even though he orders his sons never to sell the land, and although they pretend to agree, they are only waiting for his death to divide it all up amongst themselves, and to start selling it off.Once the inheritance is divided, the lazy elder son begins the life of a landlord, living solely off the rents and his share of the crops grown by the poor tenant farmers. Whenever he needs silver, to support his rich lifestyle, he just sells another piece of land.The second son, a successful grain merchant and money-lender, handles the sales and secretly buys the land for himself, and, like his father before him, buys up whatever land he can. Although he becomes a very rich man, he is stingy, and the family lives frugally.The third son flees his home to become a soldier on the very day that his father takes the woman he secretly loves to be his own concubine. He is a brave and fierce man, with big black frowning brows (which you will hear about over and over again). He eventually forms his own army, becomes a powerful warlord, and longs for a son to take after him.The story is slow and drawn-out, with lots of padding and repetition. The writing style is hard to follow and stilted. The author uses odd words and phrases and forms sentences in a manner that seems to imply that this is the way Chinese people think and speak. This hadn't bothered me in her other books and even added depth and authenticity to the stories. However, in “Sons” she goes overboard. I often had to stop reading and go back to try to understand what she was getting at. I found this both annoying and distracting.Most of the characters are unlikeable and without depth. Some characters could have been built up and interesting stories created around them, and I did expect some to play a more important role in the story, but they remained passive and uninteresting, and they eventually fizzle out.The book forms a lengthy and tedious link between the first and third novels in the trilogy; it plods along without suspense, and you nearly always know what is going to happen next. Except at the very end.I only finished the story because I hate leaving a book unread, especially one by such an outstanding author.My Kindle edition includes a lengthy sample of “A House Divided”, which I am now reading. It's well-written and interesting, with more likeable characters, lots of twists and turns, as well as suspense. I will definitely continue reading the third book in the trilogy.

The story developed with the same writing style and I was a bit bored. Hope #3 trilogy is faster paced

I read The Good Earth first, of course, and plan to read the 3rd book next. I love her style. She has an amazing knowledge of ancient Chinese culture.

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.

This is not a critique of Pearl S. Buck. I enjoyed the actual story and her plain, simple style that paints such a clear picture of China's old generation mixing with new in an odd period of their history. If you liked the first book, you'll more than likely enjoy this one.My biggest complain is the actual copy of the book. The font is unusual and makes it a bit hard to read if you have vision problems. There are also a lot of punctuation errors that makes it feel sloppy and poorly put together. Did no one edit this book? It is missing periods and have random quotations in places where there should be none. There is also no way to identify who is actually publisher. Had I known it'd be so poorly produced, I would have chosen a different copy but this seems to be the only one I've been able to find. All these little things are enough to break my immersion in the story and take me out of it. It is very annoying and kind of a struggle to get through.

Not as interesting as the first book as more involved with war and family issues but still love Pearl S Bucks style of writing. She paints an enlightened picture of China at that time.

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

Too much repetition

Having loved the Good Earth I was looking forward to reading the other two parts and this, the second book in the trilogy was nearly as good as the first. Worth reading if you enjoyed the original.

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.