The Lives of Tao

I read Lives of Tao while traveling--and it was the perfect book to crack open while idling away time in an airport. Not because I didn’t have anything better to do, but because it made me forget where I was.

The banter between Tao and Roen is fast-paced and witty. Tao’s dry commentary is especially funny. I was flipping pages, giggling to myself, and reminiscing on especially clever parts with my husband (who’d read it first). There’s a delightful element of wish fulfillment to the story--directionless nerd becomes awesome--that made me recall my own Roen-esque youth.

Despite the humor, there’s a deeper edge beneath the story; the humor is situational and dialogue-based, rather than farcical. Tao has a past, and a ton of show more baggage, which he relays periodically to Roen in order to help him understand why they are fighting. I really enjoyed reading these pre-chapter blurbs, which explained Tao’s involvement in human history.

In short, a lovely, engaging read! Looking forward to The Deaths of Tao! show less

Pros: interesting aliens, thought provoking

Cons: hard to sympathize with Tao’s POV

When Tao’s host is killed during a mission the alien entity must find a new host fast. Roan Tan is unsuitable in every way but beggars can’t be choosers. Now Tao has months to get him up to speed as an agent in the war between the Genjix and the Prophus because the enemy is up to something and Tao’s skills are needed.

I found this a challenging read in that I know enough history to understand that both alien sides of this war have done horrific things to humans and question the humans’ insistence that their side is doing things ‘for the betterment of humankind’. I’m sorry, causing a plague to make the war you started end faster isn’t show more helping the humans who will die either way. I therefore had a lot of difficulty sympathizing with Tao’s viewpoint.

If you can divorce yourself from the larger issues involved in the story (like the lack of human consent to becoming a host and having your life hijacked by a cause you can’t fully understand as these aliens have been waring on earth since their cashed spaceship killed the dinosaurs) it’s a fun romp. The story is basically a long training montage as Roen goes from an unhealthy lifestyle to becoming a decent agent (there’s still room for improvement in later books).

The book does - towards the end especially - deal with some of the above issues I had and I found the book quite thought provoking in several ways.

I loved the underpinning of the aliens. It’s horrifying and clever to show that they’ve manipulated the largest events in human history. I’d have liked learning more about Tao’s past, though the story gives enough to understand how things got to this point.

I didn’t find it the most engaging read. Roan grew on me but wasn’t someone I wanted to spend a lot of time with. While the pacing was ok, there was a lot of downtime, especially around the training when I found the book kind of dull. It does give the ending more punch but this isn’t a book I’d reread. show less

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Title: The Lives of Tao
Series: The Lives of Tao #1
Author: Wesley Chu
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 464
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Tao is an alien. An amorphous creature that along with a whole ship of his kind, crashed on Earth 1 bajillion years ago. They cannot long live in our atmosphere but have found that if they inhabit a terrestial life form, it protects them. And they can communicate with and in some cases control, their host. Tao show more has been in symbiosis with some of the greatest characters in human history, as the aliens want humans to advance enough so they can build them a spaceship to get the aliens back home.

Some hundreds of years ago the aliens split along lines of domination and mutualism in regards to humans. The Gengix want to dominate humans and force them into endless wars to produce better and better tech, hence getting the Gengix home quicker. The Prophus, of whom Tao is part, want humans to advance peacefully so the Prophus leave the planet in better condition than they found it when they all leave.

Tao's latest host was killed and Tao had to inhabit Roen Tan, a lazy, fat, apathetic and generall all around useless piece of humanity. But Tao, a high ranking Prophus, doesn't let Roen stay that way. With help from other Prophus members and humans working for the Prophus, Roen is turned into a decent fighting machine. Which is good, because the Gengix end up kidnapping his girlfriend and training mentor and he has to lead a group of special forces to rescue them both and find out just what the Gengix are up to.

My Thoughts:

If you had had me read Time Salvager and this back to back, I would have sworn they were written by different people. Glad I didn't give up on Chu after TS was such a phracking load of debacle'ness.

Now, with that being said, I still didn't care for Roen Tan for the entirety of the book. His attitudes were everything I've ever despised, namely, that selfish apathy that is impermeable to any and all reason and takes the path of least resistance every single time. He got better by the end but was still thick as mud sometimes and had me shaking my head. It was obviously deliberate on Chu's part and I can roll with it, but it is something to be aware of. It is also something that had better not be in the next 3 books or I'll dnf. One book I can handle, not an entire series.

For some reason I was under the impression that this was going to be funny and comedic. Not so much really. A few quips here and there were really about it. It was dealing with humanity as a whole being used by an alien race for their own ends and some of the horrific things the aliens had caused, like the bubonic plague, Chernobyl, World War I and II, the atomic bomb, etc. Death and Destruction on a scale that is almost unimaginable.

The split of the aliens into factions between the Gengix and the Prophus, I'm not sure why Chu chose to do that except to show that all life is approximately the same the universe over, ie, corrupt and terrible? I repudiate that, but on theological not philosphical grounds.

I was reminded a couple of times of the tv show Chuck. While Tao doesn't magically allow Roen to become a super karate expert like the Intersect did for Chuck, the whole idea of having a wealth of knowledge in one's head was almost the same.

The badguys were pretty good badguys. The Gengix and their human hosts were wonderfully despicable and the only thing I love better than a bad badguy is a good goodguy. Since I didn't get that, I had to settle for the first half of the equation.

I guess why I'm giving this 4stars is that I stayed up past midnight to finish this because I wanted to see how things worked out. That says a lot to me when a book can hook me like that. Hopefully the next 3 in the series can keep that hook in.

★★★★☆ show less

People require meaning. Indeed, we so crave meaning that we devote much of the human enterprise to generating it, whether in the form of religion, or politics, or (and especially) fiction. What can fiction tell us? In the case of Wesley Chu's 2013 sci-fi novel The Lives of Tao, we learn that individual happiness can only be achieved by having a cause. And possibly by mastering a martial art.

The Lives of Tao tells the story of Roen Tan, a schlubby, unhappy, Chicago-based engineer. After a lonely night at a club, and while vomiting out of the door of his car, Roen is unwittingly inducted into a worldwide extraterrestrial war. Humanity is not alone: Quasings, a gaseous alien race, have been stranded on Earth since the age of the show more dinosaurs. Unable to exist for long in Earth's atmosphere, Quasings are able to survive by entering a living "host," be it rodent, chimpanzee, or sad, chubby human. Unfortunately for Tao, the recently-evicted Quasing who takes refuge in Roen, his new host is a mess. But there's a war on, so Tao gets to work. Extraterrestrial symbiotic buddy dramedy!

As Roen and the reader learn, Quasings have been trapped on earth for millions of years, using animal life as hosts. When the first hominids appeared, Quasings saw their opportunity, and stepped in to direct evolution. One can only imagine the rictus of fear on the face of the first australopithecus to be inhabited by a wise and ancient cloud of sentient gas.

With the development of modern man, the Quasing realized that they now had a being capable of devising ever more advanced technologies, which presented them the (very) long-term possibility of finding a way home. Convinced that conflict drove human technological advancement, Quasings meddled with abandon, fostering discord throughout human history. In the wake of the Black Death, a small group of Quasing, calling themselves Prophus, determined that they should coexist with their human hosts and promote peace. The Prophus oppose the Genjix, those Quasings who believe that humanity is a mere means to their end. Roen is a bit player on a drama the timescale of which he can't even imagine.

Chu does an admirable job of presenting his scenario to readers without overwhelming them. The Lives of Tao opens with an action-oriented prologue that grabs the reader's attention and introduces Tao, who is clearly not a familiar life form. Tao's decision to wait to introduce himself to Roen serves to further ease the reader into the plot: The reader learns about Roen (and his many weaknesses), and Chu uses the opportunity to explain the back story to the reader by positioning it as Tao speaking to his new host. It's a very clean and clever way to orient the reader.

The book's structure is its weakest point. The Lives of Tao is an action-oriented story with dashes of humor. It is not comedic: The sobriety of the climax and ending belie that. Still, Chu writes the first third of the book from a comedic viewpoint. The joke is on Roen, to whom Tao serves as drill sergeant and counselor. Readers will enjoy Roen and Tao's exchanges as the latter harangues the former about getting shape, standing up for himself at his job, and so on. This portion of the novel is more lighthearted. Chu also shares extensive background about the Quasing sojourn on Earth. Readers will want more.
Unfortunately, Chu treads more traditional territory in the remainder of the book, which is mostly action. Finally trained, Roen begins to go on Prophus missions, one of which leads to some soul searching before he returns to the fold. Chu ends The Lives of Tao with an extensive action sequence and neatly positions it for a sequel.

Quibbles about structure aside, Chu poses interesting questions about human agency at both the individual and collective levels. Roen won't quit the job he hates. His colleague tells him to do something about it, to go to law school. Roen balks. It's only later, with Tao on board, that Roen finds the willpower necessary to improve his life. He eats right and works out. He stands up to his boss. He asks out his cute coworker. In the book, of course, Tao is an intelligent alien life form giving Roen a kick in the pants. But perhaps Tao is really that part of the mind that tells you to try something different. Chu seems to be saying to the reader that, if you don't like something, it's up to you to do something about it. For those of us who aren't locked into impossible circumstances, there are choices to be made. You can take the safe route, like Roen, or you can change things. It might not be pleasant, it might not be easy, but it's probably better than suffering in silence. Diagnosing Roen's unhappiness, Tao tells him, "You are causeless."

Those existential questions occur at the "species" level, too. What is the human enterprise all about? Is human history really just the story of war punctuated by all-too-brief periods of peace? Is there a common narrative to our history? The Genjix position, that war is necessary for evolution, seems almost to mirror certain theories that humans evolved only to better perpetuate the "virus" of DNA, or the assertions of some neuroscientists that humans lack free will, that we are simply acting out, based on received stimuli, the actions programmed into us.

This is all to say that there is more going on in The Lives of Tao than it would first appear. The Lives of Tao isn't a "big idea" book. It is light on science-fiction; don't read it expecting a serious exploration of the implications of this or that science. Chu, a martial artist (and former stuntman!) is firmly focused on telling an action-oriented story. There are guns. There are explosions. Still, The Lives of Tao is far from shallow in its examination of human motivation and agency. Recommended for more casual sci-fi readers who enjoy action and a touch of comedy. show less

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu is excellent science fiction! It gives a plausible explanation for the way the world is right now (assuming a willing suspension of disbelief) and keeps the reader on the edge of his seat, but smiling. Chu had to be channeling Jon Stewart and Dave Letterman as he was writing the story because Tao, the co-protagonist, has an incisive but droll, sly wit and has an eye on the big picture, but never so much that he doesn't zone in on the critical, and occasionally humorous, salient details. The story was good enough to cause me to miss some of my favorite TV shows. Not to worry, I Tivoed them, but it also caused me to almost miss filing my income tax! If you like military science fiction, this is a story told show more from a very unusual perspective that shouldn't be missed.

You see, there are two alien factions fighting each other. Tao is an elder of one faction, if beings that are essentially immortal (barring accidents and mayhem) can be said to have “elders.” These aliens have mistakenly crash landed on Earth and are trying to get off, but their bodies cannot survive in Earth's environment. They do have the ability, however, to move into a symbiotic relationship inside the bodies of the fauna of Earth, including humans. So, the aliens (the Quasing, from the planet Quasar) are trying to control human development in order to get them (us) to develop the means for the Quasing to return home, all without humans becoming aware of the existence of the aliens. The rub comes from different ideas on how best to develop humanity's civilization and abilities. One faction, the Genjix, believes that humanity requires conflict in order to advance; the other faction, the Prophus, are trying to advance civilization by peaceful cooperation that innovates through stability. The conflict has gone from personal disagreements to schism, leading to the creation of the factions and outright warfare, providing the root cause of most of the wars mankind has been through - they were all started by aliens!

Tao, a Prophus, the good guys, finds a new host as he is about to die from both enemy action and the Earth's atmosphere. The host, Roen Tan, is an ethical but meek, overweight geek who prefers watching TV, playing video games and drinking to just about every other aspect of his life, particularly his job. Tao's task is to transform this nebbish into a lean, mean, fighting machine. And thus is born a classic partnership and the reader is taken on a roller coaster ride that is thrilling, touching and witty. The Lives of Tao is a definite must-read. show less

This book has a very interesting premise: Amorphous aliens crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, and being unable to survive our atmosphere, they must inhabit a terrestrial host in a symbiotic relationship. They began with dinosaurs, and gradually worked their way up the evolutionary chain to humans, whom they are grooming to develop space travel which can take them home. Most of the greatest figures in human history were sharing their body with an alien who was guiding their progress. About 500 years ago, a war broke out between two factions of aliens, which still secretly rages today. The latest host? Roen Tan, an overweight, video-game-playing, cubicle monkey.

Sounds great right? Well… not so much. Roen is a whiny, thoroughly show more unlikeable character, and the author spends far too long on the process of turning him into a fifth-rate James Bond. When they make this into a movie they will probably condense all this into a training montage with an inspirational song playing in the background. Yes, I think this will be a movie. There are too many shoot-outs, car chases, black helicopters, private jets, hot girls and whiz-bang spy toys for a filmmaker to resist. To be perfectly honest - after about 300 pages, I was too bored to finish. show less

What a fun book!

Part spy thriller, part science fiction, part (older) coming of age story, The Lives of Tao follows the evolution of slacker Roen after he's merged with an aline being named Tao. Tao has spent thousands of years among humans and cultivated many of the great leaders throughout history, including Genghis Khan. Roen is definitely more of a fixer-upper. The man hates his IT job, has zero confidence, and an excuse to avoid any kind of difficulty in life. Slowly, Tao begins to change him. On a writing level, I love how Chu handled this. This kind of change in a character could be really boring, especially when it takes place over months and involves realistic spy work that is often dull and monotonous. Not so here. The book show more never ceased to be fascinating. show less