I just finished reading Chung Kuo, having been on-again, off-again with it for about a year. I’m usually not like that with books, but this was so literarilly… Dense… For lack of a better word, I couldn’t read more than half a chapter at a sitting.
Anyway, I finished and realized it’s only book one in like a 6-8 book series. Anyone out there read it? I’d love to hear some opinions before I plan out my next literary decade on this!
I liked it, except for the last two books.
I tried reading the series. The first one was barely OK.
To paraphrase Lincoln, they’re the type of books that people who like that type of books would like.
Reading the first book was two disgust-filled days I’ll never get back. 
It was the literary equivalent of a Charlie Chan movie, only with more spaceships and less appeal.
I remember this first book chiefly for being so entirely unmemorable. Didn’t finish it - far too dull.
Okay, sounds like I’m getting an overwhelming ‘meh’ from the Dope. Can anyone give me reasons as to why they didn’t like it?
Dense is about right. One of the few series I haven’t finished yet. I enjoyed it, but I got stuck waiting for the last few books in the series to be released, and haven’t gotten around to reading them. I’m not sure if I will, at this point.
Not so much “meh,” as “oh yeah, those.”
I thought the first three or four were good. If memory serves it was one of those series that had a really bad installment somewhere along the line, like the fourth or fifth book was extremely poor. Checking my bookshelf I have five of them, the fifth one “Beneath the tree of Heaven” must have been the one I didn’t like, and I got no further.
There is no way you should bother with it if you’re having to work through each chapter, there are better books in the genre to spend your reading energy on.
I really liked it, but I’m a big soap opera fan. Also be aware that the last book in the series is nearly unfindable.
Chang-Kuo? Definitely worth it. A significant theorem in L(2,1) labelings, demonstrating a global upper bound in a pretty neat way.
Oh, Chung Kuo. [Emily]Nevermind.[/Litella]
I got through book three or so…
I actually would like to read the series though, the main problem is that the instant you take a break something less intimidating will pop up, and then because it’s intimidating you end up not going back, and by the time you go, “Hey, I should finish that” you’ve forgotten what happened in all the bit you read.
I do however recommend his corraboratory MYST novel(s?), the first at least was perfect. I’m not sure if he was in on the followups (though I assume so.)
But getting back to Chung-kuo, how can you not like a story where the author gives his whole audience the finger? *
-
Midway through he kills off the antagonist, then brings him back as a clone–which usually would be a “Yeah right, you just wanted to keep making money off sequels.” Except, about a book earlier, the antagonist had specifically had his finger cut off and mailed to Mars (or somewhere), which is where the clone came from. So even if he did do it to prolong the series, he had at least intended to do so a good deal of time ahead of things. But most probably it was always intended–and the way he decided to prove to his audience that it wasn’t just him being greedy, was by giving us all the finger
.
Thin characterizations, uninteresting plot, and lame-ass anti-Asian caricatures ladled with a trowel did it for me.
I got through two books. It wasn’t bad, exactly, and the concept of a hyperpopulated world was pretty interesting, but it was so gorram long. If I’m going to plow through that much prose, it had better be something really special.
HA! I got up to “Days of Bitter Strength” which I believe is book 8.
Having done this is a source of some embarassment, comparable in the geek circles I run in with having read the entire “Mission: Earth” series by L. Ron Hubbard.
I read a lot of the series on 12 hour train rides in Europe, so I didn’t totally want those hours of my life back. If you’re a normally busy person without any long distance travel planned, I would tend to advise against it for the ROI (time vs. satisfaction.)
I read them all. The last 3 or so books were out of sheer bloody-mindedness.
I wouldn’t recommend them. There’s better stuff out there.
I didn’t really see it as “anti-Asian”. There certainly are some unsympathetic Chinese characters, and the society is far from utopian. But there are unsympathetic European characters too. All of his characters are morally ambiguous.