I am very conflicted about this book. Parts of it are just wonderful, masterfully combining rich, expressionistic and very poetic descriptions of situations with minimalistic, yet terribly well-found descriptions of thoughts and emotional states. The "sci" part of it also feels fairly well-researched.

However, my problem with the book begins with the "fi" part. Some of the characters strike me as flat and wholly unrealistic, especially the roguish cop Da Shi who combines a superhuman level of insight into the human psyche with a cartoonishly insensitive behaviour. It is impossible for me to tell if this is a cultural trope that I as a Westener is unfamiliar with, and therefore cannot accept as readily as someone who shares the author's cultural background or if it is simply poor character construction. Also, parts of the world-building and overarching plot struck me as very cliché, and frequently gave me a feeling of "oh, no they didn't just...". This is unfortunate, because the author's afterword to my edition shows a much greater visionary potential than the book itself!