Daniel’s Reviews > Privateers > Status Update

The other Cabinet officers were arrayed around the table, a neatly picked balance of whites, blacks and Hispanics, men and women.

Jesus the racism keeps going.

“The Latin father, upholding the honor of his family,” Dan said. “You’d better have security check him out for weapons when he gets here.”

I swear race enters into every fucking interaction if someone isn't white in this book. I can't wait to hit 30% so I drop it

Dan reached for his teacup again. It was blood red, with a tiny white heron painted in flight. Before he could put the cup down, the light paper shoji screen to his right slid back and a tall, slim, smiling Japanese youth in his early twenties stepped into the room.

Gotta remind you we're in Japan.

Dan sat on the straw mats of Saito Yamagata’s living room floor, sipping hot Japanese tea and trying to convince himself that it was four o’clock in the afternoon and not three in the morning. The room was virtually bare of furnishings; nothing but an exquisitely lacquered low table bearing the tea service, and a pair of matched silk paintings on the walls to either side.

We're in japan, it's very Japanese.

She was good-looking, with the typical dark coloring of the Latin woman, an inch or so taller than Lucita and noticeably rounder, the kind of woman who would be on diets all her life.

Screaming. I am screaming.

Dan touched the ON pad on the phone keyboard and Saito Yamagata’s image appeared before his desk. His round face, usually as jovial as a chubby Buddha’s, looked puffy and still half-asleep. Sitting on his heels, he was wrapped in a midnight-blue kimono decorated with white herons, the family symbol.

Oh god...

He paraded a succession of exquisite women through his bedroom, but even sex was becoming meaningless to him; he had not bothered with the video camera above the bed for months.

Oh whatever shall he do if he doesn't use his camera?

This man is just nasty. Sleeping with his secretary. Mirror over his bed with hidden cameras so he can replay his sexcapades.

Lucita was thirteen when she realized that her father was a sexually active male. Suddenly she saw him as an attractive, vigorous man in the prime of his life, and she was terrified of the strange new feelings that surged through her. He must have known, or felt similar feelings of his own. because he suddenly decided to send his only child off to a convent school, far from Caracas.

This is a really rough read so far. I know it was published in the '80s but God it is exceptionally dated.