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the royal bloodline; in turn, European merchants residing in imperial China mimicked this form of quasi-matrimonial relationship on a smaller scale.

-NOT A GIRL, NOT YET A WOMAN-

Lofthouse's Hart is not an idol; he is a flawed man, a real human being who is no stranger to vice or sin. In his dark past he has contracted syphilis from British college girls, he cheats with his new boss's girlfriend upon arriving in China, and now he is faced with temptation in the form of pubescent flesh that can be had for mere pocket change. It is a range of emotions any man traversing the forlorn roads of the word knows all to well: "He was a traveler on a lonely journey, who occasionally embraced human affections the same way that he took the sun and water."

Robert Hart recognizes that "he hadn't sailed halfway around the world to indulge in women," yet longs to escape the "stifling morality of England." In order to shake his Victorian guilt, Hart realizes he must separate himself with Victoria, and allows himself to fall for teenage Ayaou not in the heartless manner of his foreign friends who see Chinese women merely as "bed warmers" until returning to their native countries ("Most of us leave China eventually, and the women stay behind. It isn't an appealing fate"), but as an honest person longing for true love: "He hoped that she was the woman he'd always dreamed of."

Theirs is a passionate relationship. Each initially doing their best to restrain themselves ("He twined his fingers together and locked his hands behind his back lest they escape and reach for her."), curiosity and rapture quickly overcomes Hart as much as it does the virgin Ayaou. Lofthouse voyeuristically pulls away the nine-paneled silk screen from their oft-used bed, but approaches their couplings with literary deftness, arousing the reader with gentle romance ("He kissed her neck and ran his tongue along her smooth flesh. She tasted like the ocean."), before assaulting us with a climax of vivid XXX-rated details, the likes of which only lascivious historical fiction storyteller Gary Jennings heretofore could only conjure.

Regardless of the novel's title, Ayaou is not nor does she ever become within the parameters of the story Sir Robert Hart's "concubine." For all intents and purposes, she is stolen property liberated by Hart from a rival whom he considers undeserving of Ayaou's affections. Beginning with their first embrace, Hart and Ayaou's entire relationship is founded on deceit and infidelity ("What

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