I really don’t know if it should be a 3 or 4 star rating, because I clearly disliked the book, but it’s hard to tell whether it comes from the book or me.
I do think the book was much too ambitious, and that was a real flaw in my opinion. It spawns 20 years and several countries, and tries to cover every major events that have shaped the region at the time, and that was just too much for just one book. From 9/11 to the London terrorist attacks, to reflexions on American military presence in Japan or the more recent Honk Kong protests. Each part of the novel takes place in a different country at a different time of the 21st century, but because the novel needs to lay out the setting for the reader, we end up with a lot of telling and explanations, and there’s less room for the plot. As a result, everything felt rushed, things happen by chance, or because our characters are so strong. They have access to large intelligence, easily gain access to what they need, solve everything and have really good combat abilities. Their small agency is like a nest of elite agents.
The novel goes from explanations about political or social events to plot parts which a lot of action scenes too, but I found none of them really satisfactory. The plot parts were just not my cup of tea, I like realistic scenario, I really don’t care for super heroes. And the setting parts deserved more space, and I think they should be integrated with the story on a deeper level rather than being artificially explained. The first story/chapter does this very well, but the following ones less so. It felt like we were told how the social climate would affect our characters rather than living through it with them. When the last chapters introduce a new character who again tells about their life, I didn’t really care. Too much telling and not enough time actually spent with the characters.
As a result, I really didn’t care for our main cast at all. The action based, super agents tone was also not what I was looking for. I did find the first chapter really good, it was a good police procedural, our protagonist was just a good police officer, the plot was suspenseful, and it cleverly mixed reality and fiction, integrating real persons and cases to the story. But then I started liking the following chapters less and less, and I probably would have DNFed it, if the book weren’t part of a reading challenge.
Overall, I think the author wanted to tell to many things in this book, and as a result it’s a bit all over the place, and the reading experience suffered from it.
