MaggieK
11/22/2013
I was expecting something a little more cyber-punk from the description, but what extremely pleased with what i found instead!
China Mountain Zhang is such a great example of showing place through the day to day lives of its characters that it almost seems like a book about nothing... except a futuristic earth (and a Mars colony) so alive in its humanity it shines! Really, really quite thought provoking.
Rafael "China Mountain" Zhang is the loose knot tying the characters stories together, his POV sandwiching those of his Chinese boss' daughter, 2 Martian colonists, and a kite-flyer; each of whose perspective adds another layer to this wonderful sense of place. Their run-ins with prejudice, bureaucracy, love, life and death give the reader a mosaic of humanity that just shines.