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 with an incidentally science fiction setting. The originally intriguing characters are made to spend far too much time worrying about whose body parts are touching other characters body parts, and virtually all the characters suffer in our imaginations and esteem because of it. To top it all off, now that the initial wonderous exploration of the setting is over, the slow pacing set by the first book becomes extremely grating, and the whole book is rendered simply dull and too much of a chore to get through.The series continues, but after slogging through the third volumn, I did not.