David Wingrove

This was the book that ended my interest in the Chung Kuo series.

The ending of the book was a deus ex machina of the most clumsy kind. Not only did the "gods" sweep in the save the day in the last chapter, but their existence and powers were not established in the previous books or the vast majority of this one. Indeed the saviors seem to violate what we know of the universe previously established by the author. Just to top it off deus ex machina are also an egregious example of the "noble show more savage" or a sort of "Magical Native American" come to save the day.

Additionally characters seemed to act in a way contrary to their previously show personality, millions die to make points, characters you like die in pointless ways, and even when characters you were meant to hate get their comeuppance it is not particularly well handled. My advice at this point in the series is to have stopped back with Book Three, The White Mountain and imagine a better ending to the series. show less

Instead of moving the story towards the begginings of a conclusion Wingrove actually introduces new subplots - and this is book #11 (!). At this point I couldn’t care less about Chen’s wife and children, or even about Chen himself, I just want things to move forward, one way or another. Why introduce the whole Thousand Eyes subplot *now*? Why bother us with Ikuro or Hanna when the freaking protagonist - the T’ang of City Europe - is entirely absent from the book? Dammit man, give us show more some hope that this story is going somewhere eventually. Still, 4/5 stars because of the sheer brilliance of the writing and world-building. show less

This was, hands down, one of the three most vile books I've ever read in my life. It's not science fiction or Chinoiserie, as it pretends to be; it's torture-porn of the very nastiest sort. Apart from that, it's quite poorly written, and as science fiction it's grade "Z" at best.

An absolutely disgusting book. I feel as if the author tried to molest me. I've never burned or destroyed a book in my life, and I can't bring myself to start now, but I will not continue reading it and I will never show more open its pages again.

I wish I could give negative stars, because this book deserves thousands of them. Only Jack Chalker and one of the authors of the "Wild Cards" series have ever equalled the utter vileness of Chung Kuo.

If you like seeing "heroes" discover bizarre new ways to torture and rape innocent characters, then Chung Kuo is the book for you. If so, I hope you'll seek therapy and stay away from children. The only positive thing I can say about the book is that the writing and characters are all so flat and lifeless that the details of the book didn't linger in my memory for too long. Except that even one SECOND was too long to have some of that crap in my head! show less

http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/sfsourcebk.htm

Gosh, this is a fantastic book. An introduction by Brian Aldiss on the history of SF, following from his earlier Billion Year Spree and preparing for his revision of it with Wingrove as Trillion Year Spree; forty pages on SF sub-genres by Brian Stableford (though of course no cyberpunk, given the date); ten superb vignettes by leading writers (Bradbury, Cowper, Le Guin, Silverberg, Sladek, Tuttle, Wolfe, Zelazny) revealing their own writing show more habits; pieces by Wingrove and Malcolm Edwards on sf publishing and criticism: and a superbly grumpy and negative afterword by Kingsley Amis on why none of it is any good, at least none that has been published since his own New Maps of Hell in 1960.

All that on its own would be attractive enough, but there is more. The core of the book is a survey of the works of 880 writers, with 2500 books and short stories given individual rankings. Lots to think about - of course, there is only room for a few works per author to be given the full treatment of ratings out of 5 for idea content, charcterisation, literary merit and readability; but I found myself more often nodding in agreement than wanting to yell at the author. Basically this is all the book that the dismally awful recent Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction tried to be, and more.

Strongly recommended, if you can find it. show less