This book didn't grab me until page 126, but I'm so enamored with China Mountain Zhang and McHugh's short fiction that I kept plodding along anyway.

McHugh does a great job creating an interesting near-future science fiction world and immersing readers in her characters' lives. David and Mayla spend the novel disoriented and traumatized. There's a definite pleasure reading about non-heroic characters dealing with tense situations in fumbling, human ways.

But the plot / pacing were muddled, and on top of it I suffered from false expectations - the back copy promised a "21st-century thriller" and "tropical adventure." (I don't know why I believe book jackets. Possibly a librarian bad habit.) I'm pretty sure adventure thrillers are supposed to be high concept; this novel wasn't high-concept at all, and often I felt a bit mired, watching the characters struggle moment by moment, not certain where the book was going or what the payoff was going to be.

If the novel had been more atmospheric or had a stronger narrative voice, it might have worked, but McHugh's understated, on-the-ground narration meant that it felt more like an intense but unwieldy fever dream. (China Mountain Zhang didn't even try to attempt novel-length pacing; instead it had a few related narratives, so this was her first published attempt.)

Sum up: Definitely a somewhat weak second novel, but was a fast, interesting read (after page 126!) and will certainly read more. ( )

It's interesting. For those of you curious, title phrase appears on pg. 286. ( )

I expected to like this more than I did. An interesting but not particularly convincing near-future setting populated by complex but not particularly compelling characters. ( )

In the underground city of Caribe in the near-future, Mayla is in the midst of tense financial negotiations. Her insurance agency requires her to have a bodyguard, so she hires David Dai, a former French soldier with an injured knee and a veiled case of PTSD. After terrorists approach David for help and then make an attempt on Mayla's life, David vanishes into Caribe's underworld. Mayla soon follows.

Starts wonderfully, but peters out into mind-numbing quotidian detail and plots that the main characters are affected by but don't understand. I wished the characters' emotions were a little less tamped down; even though it felt believable, it also made it hard to care about what happened to them. Still, an excellent and almost too-realistic rendering of alienation and the tension of living in a corrupt society with unspoken, unclear rules. ( )

When French/Asian war veteran David Dai accepts a job as a security guard to a female banker in the Caribbean, he's expecting to be able to get away from the violence and trauma of fighting in Africa. However, the underwater domes of the cities of Caribe and Marincite are hardly the tropical paradise he was unconsciously expecting. Rather, they are torn by poverty and social unrest, and plagued by corrupt and incompetent authorities. The resentful former holder of his job is still at his employer's home, and to top it all off, his employer, Mayla Ling, seems to have mysteriously become a target of a terrorist group. David wants nothing more than to quit the job and go home - but underwater cities aren't always so easy to get out of, and every incident seems to get him more deeply embroiled in the local situation - and Mayla's life.
While containing a good deal of social criticism/commentary and 'humanist' insight, the story is primarily a tense, action-filled thriller. With the elements of shady business deals and takeovers, illegal drugs and colorful, dangerous underworlds, rich CEOs and shady crooks, virtual reality gaming and illicit neural stimulators, it had a very 'cyberpunk' feel - I'd highly recommend it for fans of William Gibson.

Read it in one day.... not that it's short, I just couldn't put it down! ( )