I really liked the cover and the synopsis right off the bat. I thought me and this book would get along fabulously. Unfortunately that was not the case, this one just didn't work for me. This is my first real foray into translated Chinese Sci-Fi so I wasn't sure what I was in for. It was very dense and at times, overly detailed which really brings me out of the story and made reading it a chore. Don't get me wrong, the writing is wonderful but not a lot happens and it's so long for that to be the case. To really be invested in a giant brick of a book there needs to be more plot and less meandering and philosophy and politics, at least for me anyway. I think the problem was that I was excepting more Sci-Fi and there isn't a whole lot of that besides the basic premise.