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testpattern's review
3.0
Sort of disposeable, read-it-in-a-day supernatural detective techno thriller.
In a near-future San Francisco, Detective Sergeant Bobby Zha is killed investigating a break-in in Chinatown. He awakes in the body of a white man who's been in a coma ward in NYC for 20 years. Luckily, the body he's wearing is the heir to a sizable settlement over the car crash that left it comatose, so Bobby zips back to SF to investigate his death. Police corruption and brain-swapping technothriller hijinks ensue.
Grimwood gets a lot of the feel of San Francisco right, although one feels that he didn't really leave Chinatown/Union Square on his research visits. The rest of the city is sketched in very ghostly details. A Latina character lives with her mom and brother in a hose on Valencia. There are like three actual houses on Valencia, I think. And I don't know any locals who spend that much time at Cafe De La Presse, or who would stay at the goddamned Hotel Triton, as Zha does. Grimwood did spend some worthwhile time getting to know Chinatown (except I don't know where there's room between Grant and Stockton for a warehouse on a side alley, which is where Zha is killed).
One minor gripe: editing. A character is described on one page as having studied criminology in Houston, and then on the very next page as having attended university in Austin. A chapter or so later, we find that, yes it was an MA and a PhD in Austin. Another character, Colonel Billy is wearing combat boots on one page. On the next page, the rain is running into his cracked tennis shoes. Really John, these things stick out.
In a near-future San Francisco, Detective Sergeant Bobby Zha is killed investigating a break-in in Chinatown. He awakes in the body of a white man who's been in a coma ward in NYC for 20 years. Luckily, the body he's wearing is the heir to a sizable settlement over the car crash that left it comatose, so Bobby zips back to SF to investigate his death. Police corruption and brain-swapping technothriller hijinks ensue.
Grimwood gets a lot of the feel of San Francisco right, although one feels that he didn't really leave Chinatown/Union Square on his research visits. The rest of the city is sketched in very ghostly details. A Latina character lives with her mom and brother in a hose on Valencia. There are like three actual houses on Valencia, I think. And I don't know any locals who spend that much time at Cafe De La Presse, or who would stay at the goddamned Hotel Triton, as Zha does. Grimwood did spend some worthwhile time getting to know Chinatown (except I don't know where there's room between Grant and Stockton for a warehouse on a side alley, which is where Zha is killed).
One minor gripe: editing. A character is described on one page as having studied criminology in Houston, and then on the very next page as having attended university in Austin. A chapter or so later, we find that, yes it was an MA and a PhD in Austin. Another character, Colonel Billy is wearing combat boots on one page. On the next page, the rain is running into his cracked tennis shoes. Really John, these things stick out.
lairedae's review against another edition
4.0
So wow, that was really good for a book picked solely on the colour if it's cover. ("What should I read next?" "I don't know, something red.") Supernatural noir set in an alternate San Francisco. Everything has a seedy underbelly. We'll call this 4.5 stars though, because the immersion broke every time a British word choice was thrown into this American setting.
relle_madd's review
2.0
Honestly i thought it was Meh. I had an issue with the ending rear ended by the climax. I found the story and world to be interesting. It was one of very few mystery novels that I was able to finish. Personally I rate it 2.5 of 5. I may recommend to a limited group.
nwhyte's review against another edition
http://nhw.livejournal.com/589074.html[return][return]I very much enjoyed Grimwood's Ashraf Bey trilogy, though was a little less convinced by either his earlier redRobe or his more recent Stamping Butterflies. I'm glad to report (IMHO) a return to form. Like the Ashraf Bey trilogy this is essentially a police procedural in a somewhat alternative history version of a famous port city with distint sfnal overtones to do with technological brain enhancements. (So we have identified what he does well, then.)[return][return]This time the city is San Francisco, however, and the central character is killed on page 30 - only to wake up, like Corwin in Nine Princes in Amber, in a hospital in upstate New York; and he spends the rest of the book solving his own murder. The basic plot has of course been done before, but I love Grimwood's intense and often sultry writing style; and here he successfully transfers it to a new setting, with memorable characters.[return][return]I still had a very slight feeling, after we found the solution to the mystery, that it might not hang together all that well if I inspected it too closely, but the ride was such good fun that I won't look. [return][return]A final point - I can't help noting that this is the second book by JCG featuring a scene with teenagers meeting for the first time in business class on a long-distance flight and spending the journey making out. There is presumably a true story there, waiting to be retold.
lasairfiona's review
1.0
I want so much to like this book. The idea of a dead man waking up in another body to try and solve his own murder intrigues me but it took some serious masochism to finish the book. It could go the mythical route (a 9 tailed celestial fox shows the chinese mythos) or even an almost sci fi route (surgery?) to keep my interest. Unfortunately, this book goes nowhere. The main character, Zha, has the makings of a well rounded little sh*t whose flaws outweigh his plusses who just might try to make it right but the author can't keep the character in mind. Zha is all over the place. He starts out as a misunderstood cop who has an empathy with the street people and ends up nowhere. The flaws, including womanizing and a forgetfulness when it comes to family, seem like additions instead of the integral pieces they should have been. The author must have intended for these flaws to make Zha a great character but Zha wanders through the book, seemingly lost and leaves the reader even more confused than Zha seems to be.
That doesn't even address the difficulty I had reading the story. It reads like the editor likes to read things by highlighting lines and accidently deleted a ton of the material in the process. In addition, the author seemed to have a clear beginning and a clear end with no clue what to do in the middle. The chapters occasionally switch to another character but it doesn't happen often enough for it to make sense (why am I reading about Russia during WWII when the character had barely been mentioned?). Some chapters have to be labeled flashback. There is _no_ flow in this book.
Could someone rewrite this? The character Zha deserves a deft hand. Zha could stand out in a story that was only okay and even more so in a murder mystery with 9 tailed foxes.
That doesn't even address the difficulty I had reading the story. It reads like the editor likes to read things by highlighting lines and accidently deleted a ton of the material in the process. In addition, the author seemed to have a clear beginning and a clear end with no clue what to do in the middle. The chapters occasionally switch to another character but it doesn't happen often enough for it to make sense (why am I reading about Russia during WWII when the character had barely been mentioned?). Some chapters have to be labeled flashback. There is _no_ flow in this book.
Could someone rewrite this? The character Zha deserves a deft hand. Zha could stand out in a story that was only okay and even more so in a murder mystery with 9 tailed foxes.
ashybear02's review
2.0
I can't say I enjoyed this very much at all. I know they say that it's good for characters to have flaws, but I felt Bobby was full of flaws that made him completely unlikable. The only quality he had was that he loved his daughter.
I found this very hard to get through and although quite an interesting plot line, I didn't think it was written all that well. It was hard to follow with all the POV changes and I didn't find any of the characters all that likable.
So much more could have been done with this.
I found this very hard to get through and although quite an interesting plot line, I didn't think it was written all that well. It was hard to follow with all the POV changes and I didn't find any of the characters all that likable.
So much more could have been done with this.
zeroraven's review
3.0
The promise of crime noir and Chinese folk magic drew me in. The core premise was interesting enough (a hard-boiled SF detective wakes up in someone else's body and sets out to solve his own murder), but I sometimes felt that some of the interesting SF/fantastic premises throughout the story were sometimes forced and the various threads were not tied together at the end as neatly as the reader might expect. That said, the core detective thriller was solid and the gritty Chinatown setting well described. It was an enjoyable read.
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