Book Review 143
"Chasing the Phoenix" by Michael Swanwick
2nd book in "Darger and Surplus" series.
Michael Swanwick is an excellent worldbuilder. His main skill is to create a vivid environment, in which you can dive for a long time (see also my Review 62).
This book is a mix between a Victorian comedy about two charismatic rogues and a postcyberpunk postapocalypsis. In this world, at the certain point (an Era of Utopia) AIs rebelled, and tried to erase all the humanity. Humans won, but with great losses. It was a long time ago. Now the shards of civilization exists partially in Victorian, partially in medieval era. Computer science is banned (because somewhere deep in remains of old Internet those straight jacket mad AIs are still alive), but biotechnologies are somewhat practiced.
Our protagonists are two tricksters and rogues with no extra human abilities (except that one of them is half-dog). Their main tools are sharp minds and solid moral principles.
In the previous book, they've created ruckus in the Dukedom of Moscow, while in this one they've moved to China. In fact, there the very first part of their adventures, a short story "The Dog Said Bow-Wow", where they had tricked a UK government, including the queen herself. This short story was so successful, that Michael Swanwick had written 2 full novels about them.
At the beginning of this novel the author pointed, that he never been to China and knows a little about its culture, so it is mostly came out of his imagination. It is a good and a bad thing. The good is that he is not following templates or prejudices of Chinese fiction (most of Europeans who write about China included a "Journey to the West" theme in one way or another - here it's not the case). But the references to China culture are really subtle. Seems like author got his Asian inspiration just from children's fairy tales and some Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies.
Still, its a good book. It forced me to smile many times, which is a big deal. It's reminded me the "Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens, but with more adventures and less satire. I certainly recommend to read the first short story in this series and proceed to the novels, if you'll like it. Just beware, that comparing to this short story novels are a bit diluted.