A review by peterkeep
The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

3.0

This is a pretty fun book! It's fast-paced and has some really exciting action scenes that I thought were pretty well strung together. I was a bit confused for the first 100 pages or so, because it wasn't very much like what I expected. I think somewhere along the way through other people's recommendations, I got it stuck in my head that this was going to be a funny book. Sure, there's some humor in it, but I was expecting something more along the lines of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or maybe Get Smart. It definitely wasn't either of those things, which isn't bad, but was a bit disorienting.

Anyways, once I got over my own misconceptions, I enjoyed it! It's not a perfect book by any means, but it has a good foundation of ideas. There's a nice history or broad picture of everything told mostly in epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter and Roen Tan and Tao make a fine duo to read about. There were some great serious moments in the book that touched on some really big ideas as well...things like war, human nature, etc.

I know it kind of sounds pretentious to say, but it's a charming story, and I think it'll be interesting to see how Wesley Chu evolved as a writer through this series and into his newer books.