*** Shan Sa – The Girl who Played Go
**** David Wingrove – The Broken Wheel
*** David Wingrove – The White Mountain
** Charlotte Bronte – Shirley

The girl who played go is set in China, during the Japanese conquests of the 1930s. It provides a good view into life in that place and time. I didn’t feel that it so much followed a clear story as much as established a mood/emotion or took a snapshot of a time and some people — it was almost more poetic than novelistic in its overall impression. I enjoyed it, though didn’t get as into the details of the story as when I read Shan Sa’s “Empress” in April.

These are books 2 and 3 (of 9, I think) of Wingrove’s “Chung Kuo” series, set in a future where the world has basically become a giant city housing billions of people and Chinese culture has conquered all. I liked these two as much as the first book, and look forward to continuing the series.

Shirley was kind of an odd book. The blurb and first few chapters make you think it is going to focus primarily on the political/economic unrest of the time, when the gradual industrialization of mills in northern England was putting workers out of jobs and stirring up riots and unrest. But then it seems to become a sort of cliche and rather dull love story. But then the title character comes along (halfway through the book?) and suddenly you think it’s going to be very interesting after all. Shirley, though unquestionably feminine personally, has the swagger of a young nobleman, thanks to a father who’d wished for sons and raised her almost as one and to having inherited the estate and title. The relationship that develops in this part of the book between the sweet and innocent Caroline and the dashing Shirley is one of the best I’ve read in a long time, and I was hoping Bronte would go the unconventional route and have them end up together. Of course, I didn’t think they would be avowed lesbians or anything, but given the disappointments of the book’s romantic stories at that point, it was conceivable that they’d settle down together in a way that would have been wonderful. Alas, the conventional had to creep back in and the book ends as many do, with a couple of weddings. The men involved are not at all bad characters, but the love story happy endings seem honestly fairly cobbled together. The Shirley/Caroline ending would have been much better. I almost put the book down in boredom sometime during the early dull romance part of the book, but I can recommend sticking through that part to enjoy the middle and, to a lesser degree, the end. The politics and economics that form the background, as well, were interesting to read about.