The historical and cultural details [in Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom] are vivid, the book giving a great deal of information about [China] as well as about the Heavenly Kingdom and its warriors. It follows the lives of Wang Lee and Mei Lin as they participate (separately or together) in military marches, battles, and camp life, concluding with their union, at the close of the book, and their settlement into the ancestral hut of Wang Lee's family. This is a fascinating story, and well-told; if it does not have the emotional impact of Paterson's earlier historical fiction (Of Nightingales That Weep, The Master Puppeteer) it has pace and color, and it is particularly interesting in its reflection of cultural diffusion, as the militant leaders of the Taiping Rebellion fuse their interpretation of Christian doctrine with their own traditions.
Zena Sutherland, in a review of "Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom," in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Vol. 36, No. 11, July-August, 1983, p. 216.
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