Not the best science fiction book I have read. The plot ended up being very predictable.Also the author's explanation of how the previous world collapses due to market failure did not sound very plausible. A failed market could be the start of destruction leading to greater economic problems, whi...
This is the third book of the initially very promising 'Chung Kuo' series. Alas, by this point the series is well off the rails, and all that early promise is pretty much lost. The bigger more epic issues raised by the first book are largely dropped in favor of what is increasingly a meloadrama...
Where the first book set up the world of Chung Kuo nicely, and set a decent pace for the events that took place, this book just drags. I can't describe my level of annoyance and disgust when, for example, getting to the 7/8ths point of the book, I saw story threads for Ben Shepherd just gettin...
Okay, so the rundown is as follows. Chung Kuo is a future history on an epic, operatic scale. The book traces the start of the "War of Two Directions", a conflict between the Confucianist stasis of the ruling Chinese empire and the upper-class Europeans who wish for progress, change, ...