Waste Tide

Chen Qiufan's "The Waste Tide" is a beautifully haunting novel. A highly recommend read.

Set in the fictitious future city of Silicon Isle -- a depressing nightmare where migrant workers toil night and day to take apart e-waste in an unforgiving filthy, toxic, cancer-inducing environment.

The world-building and characters Chen captures are rich and deep. You feel for Mimi and her unfortunate migrant workers who are treated like worthless dirt by Silicon Isle's affluent & arrogant caste.

And you encounter many gems along the way, such as the fusion of Chinese myths, a spirit-powered mech of death, as well as hilarious and visually entertaining snippets:

"The woman grabbed him by the left leg and dragged the powerless Kaizong into a temporary shed filled with junked prostheses. She pulled a rubber dildo out of the pile and, with astounding arm strength, stretched it into a rope, which she used to tie Kaizong's hands securely to a water pipe. 'You better learn your lesson. Next time, I'll use your own dick.' The woman cackled..."

Ouch!

A slow paced techno / echo thriller.

The ideas are interesting enough, but the writing didn't grab me

A good read set against an all too realistic yet futuristic setting. The western world is dumping its waste elsewhere and China greedily takes the few bucks to process said waste at great cost to people and nature. Plenty of blame to go around, such as the business man working for a crooked company from the USA, Chinese government officials and even the locals share in it.

However, the story is more than a lament against the sick mechanics of the global economy. It is a story about two people from very different backgrounds finding each other, then losing each other again. But it’s also a grimy cyberpunk story about cyborgs, augmented reality and mind-enhancing viruses.

It was quite a long read. Perhaps a bit too long, for at times, I felt the story was dragging, and the narrative was hampered by the occasional info dump. I also felt some of the elements of the story, especially Scott’s arc, were a bit disjointed. Nothing too intrusive though, and it doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a good and entertaining book.

A powerful, gripping book, that suffers a little from leaving some of its most potentially interesting characters insufficiently fleshed out.[return][return]It wonderfully subverts typical hero / saviour narratives, and complicates questions about who holds power and who is on the "good" or "bad" side of a conflict. But it still renders its privileged non-heroes a lot more three-dimensional than any of the less privileged people who as a collective this book is largely about.