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Carregando... The Middle Kingdom (1990)de David Wingrove
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I really enjoyed this book and the vast amount of characters involved. The world felt fleshed out and it seemed like the storyline was leading to a massive confrontation and then...the book just stopped. For such a massive tome I expected a better resolution. We'll see if the second book in the series improves upon the first. ( ) 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 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! I'm really torn over how to review this book. It's certainly an intriguing concept - a future world in which the Chinese reign supreme, and in which they've constructed an elaborate false history to make it seem that things have always been that way - and the author's imagining of this strange, beehive-like world, positively seething and close to bursting at the seams, is definitely interesting. However, almost everything about his version of "future Han" culture feels off in some fashion, both within the confines of his created world (would certain ethnic slurs and modes of thought still exist inside the world of Chung Kuo? I don't think so ) and when viewed from the outside (it feels far more like an old-school Western fantasy about Chinese history and thought than anything approximating the complex reality, notwithstanding the author's obvious genuine knowledge of and affection for it). The characterisation is fairly stiff, and I've seldom come across child characters who felt less like real children than these ones. In addition to that, this book contains one of the most relentlessly male gazes I've seen in a long time, and it didn't escape my notice that we followed a string of brilliant (and ridiculously young) male characters, while there was not *one single* female character who existed as complete entity in and of herself. There was also some extremely nasty - and sexualised - violence that frequently felt gratuitous. In short, it was a hard book to slog through. And yet - and yet! - part of me is intrigued enough to contemplate reading the next book in the series. Maybe.
Eerste, lijvige deel van een zeer omvangrijke, zevendelige serie over de toekomstige Aarde rond het jaar 2200. De mensheid leeft in klassen verdeeld onder enorme koepels, die de vroegere werelddelen omspannen. De Chinezen, onder leiding van de Raad van Zeven, hebben al meer dan 100 jaar de aarde met zijn meer dan 35 miljard mensen in een ijzeren greep. Elke verandering wordt tegengehouden. Een reactie van vernieuwers is het onvermijdelijk gevolg. Beschreven wordt hoe de verschillende partijen over en weer intrigeren. Actie, spanning, romantiek (en erotiek) zijn de ingrediënten van een goed leesbaar en onderhoudend geschreven epos volgens de beste tradities van het genre. Echt spectaculair en vernieuwend is het niet, maar de liefhebbers van dit soort lectuur, die er maar niet genoeg van kunnen krijgen, zullen van het verhaal genieten. Het is met kennis van zaken beschreven. Behoorlijke druk en redelijke bladspiegel. Witte omslag met Chinese afbeelding.
The Year is 2190. China has once again become a world unto itself and this time its only boundary is space . . . The world is City Earth, ruled by the Seven, China's new kings. Beautiful, controlled, sensual, this high-tech society is rushing toward war between the forces of West and East, between the rebels who hunger for change and the overlords who demand stability, between the very powers of darkness and light. It will be an era of violent conflagration destined to expose the basest elements of human nature . . . and the highest dreams. An epic that draws us into an alternative world so real, so complete that we become denizens of the new Middle Kingdom, touched by longings we never imagined. . . driven by forces as ancient as man's first breath. Not since Asminov's Foundation books and Herbert's Dune has there been such a majestic and powerful vision of a believable other world. . . seductive, chilling, unforgettable! Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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