Son of
Heaven by David Wingrove Chung Kuo Recast #1
The year is 2065, two decades after the great
economic collapse that destroyed civilization. With its power broken and its
cities ruined, life in the West continues in scattered communities. In rural
Dorset, Jake Reed lives with his 14-year-old son and memories of the great
collapse. Back in ’43, Jakes was a rich, young futures broker immersed in the
datscape of the world’s financial markets. He saw what was coming – and who was
behind it. Forewarned, he was one of the few to escape the fall
For 22 years Jake has lived in fear of the
future, and finally it is coming – quite literally – across the plain towards
him. Chinese airships are in the skies and a strange glacial structure
dominates the horizon. Under the rule of the mighty Tsao Ch’un, a resurgent
Chine is seeking to abolish the past and bring about world peace through
rigidly enforced order. But a civil war looms and Jake will find himself at the
hear of the struggle for the future
David
Wingrove’s Chung Kuo series was originally published in between 1988 and 1999.
In February of 2011 Corvus decided to breath new life into the Chung Kuo
series, publishing the new series as the “recast” version, adding a bunch of
new material to the already existing book and
featuring not one but two prequel to the series. In total the re-release is
scheduled to be a whopping twenty volumes!
The first
new prequel to the Chung Kuo Recast is called Son of Heaven. I am not familiar
with the original series, so I won’t be able to relate any of the events that
happen in the original series, I do think it puts me in somewhat of an
advantage being fully new to the series and judging this book, not only by its
cover (which is quite luring I might say so).
The cover of
Son of Heaven depicts some oriental inspiration, so I was putting my mind to
wards that. However this isn’t the case (just yet). The book is divided in
three parts and Son of Heaven starts of in The United Kingdom of 2065, where
you follow the footsteps of the main protagonist Jake Reed. Already you see the
effects of the collapse of the world early on. Money is scarce but foodstuffs
and other things are even scarcer and their prices only continue you to rise.
This first focus is on the more day-to-day dealing of Jake and his friends, how
they now survive the world, how stranger are frowned upon. And even though you
have a narrow focus on building the world, there are a few hints of Jake’s
characters past that make you wonder how it was when the world was still
blooming. Another thing that does fall to notice is the pacing of the story. It
is slow, however I do think that it was with the intention of David Wingrove to
keep the story moving this way. He really took the time to develop early on a
great sense of the collapsed and rough world that is surrounding Jake and his
friend in Dorset. The pacing of the book doesn’t really take off on the whole
but there are a few entries in Son of Heaven that are really stunning to read
about.
It is by the
transition from the first part to the second part of the book, which focuses on
Jakes history, that Son of Heaven really took of. You got the threat of the
Chinese at the end of the first part, and I hoped that I would get a lot of
explanations in the second part of Son of Heaven, and yes! I was right. It was
actually quite hard to imagine the world as it was in 2043 after having had to
deal with such a destroyed world in the future. Jake was a prosperous businessman;
he had everything, the money, the friends, the beautiful girlfriend. It seemed
that his life couldn’t fail. However by the intervention of the Chinese
everything collapsed. What I really liked about this part is that it starts you
off clueless as to where the story would go and more importantly how it would
finish. In this second part of the book there is emphasis on the technology that
was and only later when you have learned more about this and how prosperous the
west was, David Wingrove pushes the story into the final direction, the Collapse
and how it was partially brought on.
In the third
and final part of the book, Jake’s past seems to be catching up with him. In
here both worlds, that of the Chinese and the English, start to collide. For
the first time in the book you get to see more of the faces and in particular
the details that brought on the Collapse. The paragraphs in these final
chapters start to alternate between the viewpoints of Jake and that of a
Chinese general Jiang Lei, a Han general that works for Tsao Ch’un, the Chinese
Emperor behind the collapse. This last part really gave a good grip of the
story, especially making the intentions partly clear of the Chinese, revealing
a bit of their rich history and how they possibly plan to take everything
further into total world domination. In the end of the book you are left with a
great entrance to be used in the second prequel of the series, setting Jake and
his family into something totally new.
Though Son
of Heaven is a prequel in the series, I haven’t read the original series, so I
will just put this down as a kick-off in the Chung Kuo Recast series. It might
by that once I read the third book, the original first book in the series that
something might fall into place, and I am actually quite curious about that!
But for now, Son of Heaven is a solid introduction into the Chung Kuo Recast,
showing enough of the destroyed world and how people inhabit it now. With Jake
Reed’s personal story being laid down to you, and how tough he and his family
have it, it actually kept me quite glued to the pages of the force behind the Collapse
and what their motivation would be, and also a bit on how they would have
brought on the Collapse. Son of Heaven is written in a way that it both
highlights the world of 2043 and that of 2065 and it just seems that a big plan
is being laid ahead already on how this series will unfold further, it just
feels like its gearing up towards something big.