Tag: fiction

I’ve got to be very careful with what I say in this review.

 

Though Beijing Smog is fiction, it is political in nature,  I’ll stick to reviewing the novel without going on tangents. To be honest, the book was awful.

 

What it’s about and who’s involved:

Beijing Smog follows the stories of three seemingly unrelated groups of characters who all have a hand in dangerous cyber-business. After the scheme comes crashing down, several of the characters meet and no one is really sure of the truth. The only reality is that everything relates to the Party.

US Team

The most relevant member of the US Team is is Chuck Drayton, the screw up “Cyber Guy” who is unqualified for his job as a US Ambassador in Shanghai. We meet other members of Team USA, but these diplomats and hackers don’t do much to advance the plot.

Hong Kong Team

Calling Anthony “Tony” Morgan part of the Hong Kong team is not quite right, considering he actually lives in Shanghai (like Chuck). His wife (Cindy Wu) has a house in Beijing as well, but most of Tony’s story takes place in Hong Kong and Macau. He meets some people there, but these people are mostly irrelevant.

Beijing Team

The Beijing Team is actually just a group of flunkee college students who spend too much time online. Wang, Liu and Zhang are a group of friends who live and study together, though they focus more on getting rich quick than their courses. I can’t remember their full names because Ian Williams mostly refers to them by their surnames. None of the boys are particularly bright.

 

The Review

There are so many issues with Beijing Smog I don’t even know where to start. Within five minutes of opening the book, I already hated Chuck Drayton. He’s what I’d call the typical entitled American expat. If things don’t go his way he flies off the handle, and he seems to have almost no understanding of China and Chinese culture. He complains that a mix up at the hotel and bad traffic forced him to take the metro, and that he’s going to be late to his function. The thing is, he’s only four stops away from the venue. If four metro stops (8-10 minutes on the Beijing metro) is going to make you late, then not even a cab will save you.

 

Besides, Chuck doesn’t take his job seriously and he’s always making mistakes. He hardly knows the first thing about software, let alone anything about cyber security. His knowledge amounts to what you can learn from spending a few hours on Google. Throughout the novel, Chuck’s ineptitude and his contempt for others make him my least favorite character. He also puts other people in danger.

 

When I met Tony I thought he was a nice enough guy, but the way Williams describes his wealth is unrealistic. I can’t remember how much his apartment costs, but unless he actually bought the place there is no rent in Shanghai that is as high as Tony’s supposedly is. I’m extremely familiar with Shanghai and its rent prices. The number may seem like nothing compared to New York prices but it’s astronomical compared to the average Shanghai price, even for an apartment in Shanghai’s financial district.

 

Tony doesn’t have too many character flaws. He frequently visits of massage parlors, but that’s pretty much to be expected of his sort (that doesn’t make it right). He and his wife have a mechanical relationship (also common). He’s just a man doing what he can to make money. His greed is off-putting but he’s still not as bad as Chuck.

 

Finally, we come to the Beijing Team. The boys are so maddeningly daft I had to take breaks after reading their sections. For the first part of the novel, Williams spends time talking about Zhang and his issues. Zhang, however, turns out to be an unnecessary character, as is his friend Liu. Wang is the only character that matters in the end, but we only really start to get to know him in the last third of the novel.

 

On that note, Beijing Smog is incredibly slow-paced. It’s not obvious to the readers how the characters are connected until about halfway through the novel, and even the characters’ stories don’t really start overlapping until about the 75% mark. When the characters do meet each other, it’s only Chuck that meets Wang, and their interaction only lasted a handful of pages. Tony never meets Wang, but Wang meets one of Tony’s new enemies. Chuck and Tony meet early on, but there’s so much filler that their interactions become boring.

 

In fact, there are entire chapters of filler and the dialogue is terrible. I found myself actively thinking “who talks like this?” I also found it hard to believe that after being confronted by the Party about his online activity TWICE, Wang still doesn’t understand the ramifications of his online posts. His excuse is always, “it was just a joke!” or “I post so many things everyday, how can I remember that one post?” I also make a million posts a day, but I still generally remember what I posted. Are there posts I regret? Yes, but I haven’t forgotten them. Wang starts seeing one of the main symbols from his posts popping up at the protests around the country and can not wrap his pea-brained head around why it is problematic from the government’s point of view. By extension, he can’t figure out why the authorities keep hounding him. HIS FRIEND EVEN WARNS HIM ABOUT THE CRACKDOWN ON THE USAGE OF CERTAIN WORDS AND SYMBOLS. HE IGNORES THE WARNING AND CONTINUES TO POST, DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHY THE AUTHORITIES WON’T LEAVE HIM ALONE. How can someone be so thick-skulled?

 

Clearly, I am angry.

 

Perhaps it’s unfair to judge a novel based on the characters, but since the characters are the substance of the novel, what choice do I have? Even if the characters were perfect, it’s not like Beijing Smog is a literary masterpiece.

 

In summary, this book is the story of a bunch of idiots that and could have been reduced to the size of a novella. There are loose ends in the novel too, which is just great. I’m giving Beijing Smog two stars because I actually finished it, but I hated every single second.

 

The book is still too new for Thriftbooks and other secondhand sites, but here’s Beijng Smog on Amazon and Goodreads.

 

Beijing Smog is somewhat similar to Ray Hecht’s South China Morning Blues,  so I’ve linked that review as well (but SCMB was actually a much better book). I wrote it a couple years ago and haven’t updated since, so it still follows the older format.

 

If you prefer the older format, let me know! I’ll go back to it. 😛  For the record, I received Beijing Smog as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.