Jain
12/9/2014
A blend of mythological fantasy and dystopic science fiction that didn't really work for me. The story alternates between two settings: 19th century China and a future Pacific Northwest. There are enough unexplored science fictional aspects to the China setting that those portions of the book seem less fantastical than they do surreal. Which would be fine--albeit not to my taste--were it not for the "unexplored" bit; the surreality felt more sloppy than deliberate to me. Similarly, a lot of the futuristic elements in the Pacific Northwest setting seem to exist merely to be quirky and interesting, but don't make sense otherwise. There are still a lot of great ideas in the book; they just never cohere properly.
The part that I hated, though, was that the main characters continually do inexplicable things and then, when called out on their actions by others, can offer no explanation. Now, obviously, people sometimes act inexplicably, but people also tend to be very skilled at self-justification. Even if there's no rational reason for doing something, that doesn't mean a reason--however half-baked--won't be manufactured after the fact. That the main characters can't do so means that it feels as though periodically they turn into automatons whose only job is to further the plot.