I’m obviously still a sucker for a moving finale. In the case of this novel I was a sucker for the whole thing. Written in very simple prose, almost as if the book was a series of screenshots, the story has time to develop through an A, B, C and then F plot that I [...]

Try squeezing 30 years of your life into 3 pages, and maybe then you will understand what 3000 years of Chinese history feels like on 300 pages. Somehow though, J.A.G. Roberts pulls it off. The book never leaves you feeling like this or that period was shortchanged. On the contrary, you leave the reading well [...]