The Waste Tide
2019 • 352 pages
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
'An accomplished eco-techno-thriller with heart and soul' DAVID MITCHELL. Mimi is drowning in the world's trash. She's a 'waste girl', a scavenger picking through towering heaps of hazardous electronic detritus. Along with thousands of other migrant workers, she was lured to Silicon Isle, off the southern coast of China, by the promise of steady work and a better life. But Silicon Isle is where the rotten fruits of capitalism and consumer culture come to their toxic end. The land is hopelessly polluted, the workers utterly at the mercy of those in power. And now a storm is gathering, as ruthless local gangs skirmish for control, eco-terrorists conspire, investors hunger for profit, and a Chinese-American interpreter searches for his roots. As these forces collide, conflict erupts - a war between rich and poor, a battle between past and future. Mimi must decide if she will remain a pawn... or change the rules of the game altogether. 'Waste Tideis a work of spoiled and toxic beauty ... It's more than a timely eco-thriller; it's a dark mirror held up to our selves' SIMON INGS.
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This was an interesting read - my first experience of Chinese sci-fi. The core themes of class oppression and impending environmental disaster are well realized. In many ways this book is very apt for our times. The underlying guilt of some of the main characters is quite poignant.
However, this book does suffer from a very uneven pacing and structure. The first half is incredibly slow. There is an overuse of technical details (there is a tendency to use overly complex technical descriptions of the brain or machines) which bog down the story in a strange mechanical way. The timeline jumps around a bit when moving between characters in a somewhat jarring way. The characters themselves are a bit stiff and mechanical. As this is a translation I do wonder how much of this is due to the fact it wasn't originally written in English. However, the underlying theme and strangeness help to breathe life into the story that is just the right side of believable as a near future dystopia.
