Book Review: The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao

One of the intellectual achievements of this strange personal and global year was to get to know a lot of diverse voices representing authors from almost all over the world. As all my fantastic travel plans are on hold as for now at least I can travel far away with only my heart and my mind getting to know facts that make me curious to explore more - hopefully in person in a near future.

Tiffany Tsao is an author and translator (Indonesian to English) of Chinese-Indonesian descent, currently living in Australia. The Majesties is a combination of literary fiction and mystery thriller - or rather (rich) family saga whoddunit. 

First and foremost, let´s start with the good things. For instance, the mesmerizing cover: a monarch butterfly on the head of a portrait whose face is made of colourful brushes. Finally a cover that is more than copy-pasting a certain format where only the title and the name of the author changes from a book to another. An excellent visual choice hard to compete with.

Another good thing about the book - which I had access to in audio format - is that there is a story which flows good, with individual episodes which are very well written. There are characters with a strong and complex personality and events they are involved to which are enfolding and are very well inserted into the narrative. The problem is when those episodes are brought together.

The Majesties is focused on the events that lead to the poisoning of 300 people at the Sulinado family gathering. Sulinado are a rich Chinese tycoon family and their killing is the work of Estella, a deceived family member. The story is told by her sister Gwendolyn, the sole survivor of the attack. Betrayed by her husband, a womanizer who ended up - as in died/being murdered/poisoned - as a fanatic born-again Christian, feeling abused by her family who sacrified her for their business interests - and she is not the only one - Estella doesn´t have anything to lose. Without a life of her own, she refuses to cope any more with the game of elegant appearances. As there is no way out, at least let´s prepare an epic revenge. Which succeeds. 

The story has an enormous potential of tension and complex turns of events, but unfortunatelly it is told on a monotonous voice which steals the charm and the literary potential of the story. Which is so pitiful.

Rating: 2.5