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plantedbypiggies 's review for:
Vagabonds
by Hao Jingfang
I won this one in a Goodreads giveaway from Saga press. It's fast becoming a go-to publishing house for me.
When I first read the description, I was expecting a book with a faster pace than what this was. Instead of a plot-driven novel of political intrigue, Vagabonds is a character study about the effects of cultural exposure; a tack I grew to appreciate. It's a slow soak of a read which definitely benefits from having large blocks of time to devote to it.
Since this book was originally written in a Chinese language (I'm assuming Mandarin), there is a bit of remoteness in the voice. It takes a while to get used to, but in the end it serves to make the future feel like a different place.
It felt like a rather timely novel for the summer of 2020, when America is undergoing a lot of social turmoil. Maybe we don't have all the answers to our own problems. Perhaps another group has a different solution that could work better. And maybe we, in turn, has the answer to a problem that our counterparts have.
When I first read the description, I was expecting a book with a faster pace than what this was. Instead of a plot-driven novel of political intrigue, Vagabonds is a character study about the effects of cultural exposure; a tack I grew to appreciate. It's a slow soak of a read which definitely benefits from having large blocks of time to devote to it.
Since this book was originally written in a Chinese language (I'm assuming Mandarin), there is a bit of remoteness in the voice. It takes a while to get used to, but in the end it serves to make the future feel like a different place.
It felt like a rather timely novel for the summer of 2020, when America is undergoing a lot of social turmoil. Maybe we don't have all the answers to our own problems. Perhaps another group has a different solution that could work better. And maybe we, in turn, has the answer to a problem that our counterparts have.