The Orchid and the Emerald is an incredibly inconsistent book. At its best, it’s dressing up well-researched history with a bit of atmospheric flair. At its worst, it’s a painfully two-dimensional adventure novel that aspires to the excitement (and objectification of the “exotic”) of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but delivers something more like Firewalker. (Not familiar with the reference? There’s probably a good reason.)
The book’s opening chapters do a great job of setting the stage, establishing the mood of Great Britain immediately on the heels of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo, and fleshing out one of the main characters – Captain William Gunn – in a believable and sympathetic way. Then the action moves from British country estates into the jungles of South America, and things start to go progressively downhill, both for Captain Gunn and for the poor reader.
The second main character is introduced: Nathaniel Bidwell, the black sheep of a prominent New England merchant family who turned his back on society at an early age to live with the Wampanoag tribe. Now he’s a wanted man in the United States, hoping to make his fortune and/or his reputation fighting and foraging on the front lines of the revolution in New Granada.
The two men meet up in the ranks of General Bolivar’s army, and right away it’s made clear that they could not be more different: Brit vs. Yank, military officer vs. frontier woodsman, meticulous planner vs. impetuous hothead. This is one of those buddy stories where two men are thrown together by fate, forced to work hand-in-hand, and eventually develop a grudging respect – maybe even admiration – that bridges their deep, nigh-unreconcilable differences.
That’s all well and good, except their “distrustful sparring” has all the depth of playground insults hurled by 12 year-old boys:
“What are you babbling about now, ‘Admiral?’ Are you saying I’m an idiot?”
“What I’m saying, Yank, is you’ll be a dead idiot if you don’t follow me.”
”Some choice, lobsterback.”
Despite a couple hundred pages of saving each other’s lives over and over again, their witty repartee never gets any better than that.
The plot line for the duo’s adventures through the Amazon rainforest is similarly thin, and it’s the one area of the book that feels like it’s based less on actual historical research and more on a few rewatchings of Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold. No cliche is spared: there are narrow escapes from the jaws of death at every turn; awe-inspiring, hidden civilizations of noble indigenous peoples; and sneering, moustache-twirling agents of everyone from the Spanish crown to the reboot of the Dutch East India Company.
Having seen the kind of brush with which the authors paint pre-Columbian civilizations in South America, I’m reluctant to pick up The Orchid and the Emerald’s sequel (the pithily named All the Tea in China). But I would say this one is worth checking out if you’re looking for a light, atmospheric read that takes care to get the political and military aspects right (I’m not an expert, but both the fictionalized account of Battle of Boyaca and the description of a naval engagement between a British schooner and an East Indiaman include a number of convincing details regarding both tactics and armament). If you’re also hoping for a compelling story or fully realized characters, though, best look elsewhere.
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