The Book Plank

Ice and Fire by David Wingrove, Chung Kuo Recast #4 Past Secrets The year is 2201. Hung Kuo, the great City that covers the globe, enjoys an uneasy peace. But it is a peace that will soon be disrupted by the discovery of the Aristotle File, which charts the real history of the world – a truth which has been suppressed for centuries. Present dangers Cold, cruel and calculating, Howard DeVore is determined to end the rule of the Seven T’angs and make way for his own bid for power. The harbinger of Change is the starship The New Hope – and its destruction will force the rebel factions into open warfare with the Seven The Fight begins… Ice and Fire is the fourth book in the Chung Kuo Recast series, I just started over a month ago reading this series and was blown away with the introduced concept and how David Wingrove started plotting this story of epic proportions. So far the prologues were a great start to the series I learned a lot about the comings and goings...

The Middle Earth by David Wingrove, Chung Kuo Recast #3 IMMOVABLE PEACE The year is 2196. The great Empire of Ice, Chung Kuo, has finally been shaken after more than a century of peace enforced by brutal tyranny. The Minister of the Edict - an official responsible for licensing all technology that could lead to Change - has been assassinated. The seven ruling T'ang struggle to maintain Stasis, even as their mile-high, continent-spanning cities descend into chaos. IRRESISTIBLE CHAOS Amid the chaos, the rebels responsible for the assassination seize the opportunity to effect Change. But the assassination was orchestrated by those far closer to the ruling power and this betrayal, the first of many, will lead them all into the world-shattering War of Two Directions. WAR IS COMING... The Middle Earth is the original first book of the Chung Kuo series, but makes up the third book in the Chung Kuo Recast series, the rewritten version of the original one.  The ...

Daylight on Iron Mountain by David Wingrove, Chung Kuo Recast #2. It is 2087. Japan lies under a radioactive cloud, its denizens wiped out. America has been subjugated, its inhabitants scattered. The Old World is dead, buried beneath the new foundations of the New – Chung Kuo, a mile-high, globe spanning megacity. Billions have perished and history has been rewritten with their blood. Over all of this one man reigns supreme: Tsao Ch’un – the Son of Heaven. But it takes one type of man to conquer a world, another to rule it. The Son of Heaven’s brutality has alienated even his closest general and in the depths of the grat city, rebellion has been unleashed. The Great Wheel of Change turns. The fight for the future has only just begun. Daylight on Iron Mountain is the second book and second prologue to the revised Chung Kuo series. The original series began with The Middle Kingdom, which is up next in the Chung Kuo Recast. I was thinking about why a series would need...

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...