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, ...
At the lower gate he turned, looking back across the bay. New growth crowded the distant foreshore, masking where the fire had raged five years earlier. Only at the hill’s crest, where the old house had stood, did the new vegetation end. There the land was fused a glassy black.The tall seventeen-...
In mid-air she sang, and at high noon. Odin, sitting in his throne of gold, was silent, and listening he understood, for from the beginning he had foreknowledge of the end. Yet was he not afraid. He awaited Ragnarok, ‘the Dusk of the Gods’, as in youth he had waited, and now he was grown old.’ – ...
It was only now, looking out across that endless, geometric whiteness, that he understood how staggeringly vast Tsao Ch’un’s city had become. Operating at the very edge of things – at the breaking crest of the great wave of resettlement – he had been too close to see it. But now that he did, he g...
‘What now?’ ‘We go back to town,’ he says. ‘Get the cart and go on. To Moscow. That was your plan, wasn’t it?’ I nod. Only it feels strange. Sergei seems to know too much. ‘We need to talk,’ I say. He nods. ‘I know. But not now.’ We hasten on, and for a while it’s fine, only Katerina begins to ge...
He is also the co-author of the first three MYST books – novelizations of one of the world’s bestselling computer games. He lives in north London with his wife and four daughters. 1 Son of Heaven 2 Daylight on Iron Mountain 3 The Middle Kingdom 4 Ic...
‘It was all a terrible mistake, my love. They were after me.’ Jelka shook her head, but a huge lump sat in her throat at the thought of what had happened. She had spent the last ten days in bed, suffering from shock, the after-reaction fierce, frightening. It had felt like she was going mad. Her ...