Thursday, April 25, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ruse by Cindy Pon




Ruse is the sequel to Cindy Pon's "Want," her YA dystopian novel from 2017.  I enjoyed Want quite a bit (see my review here), which featured a heist-like structure as its hero and his friends attempted to take down an evil businessman in a future Taiwan so overrun by pollution that the rich have started to wear special suits so they won't have to breathe the actual air.  It was not a very ambitious book in terms of plot - a generally straightforward battle between good guys and bad guys, with a love interest of uncertain loyalty in the middle - but the characters were excellently done and I definitely was interested in seeing them again.

Ruse moves the action to a similarly dystopian (covered in horrible air pollution that means without filtration technology, people could die) Shanghai, but again features hero Jason Zhou and his crew against the evil businessman Jin, with Jin's daughter Daiyu again as the love interest.  But the book differentiates itself from its predecessor by showing us other characters' points of view and showing the characters changing as a result of the events of Want. The result is a very successful follow-up that should appeal to anyone who enjoyed Want.

Note: Ruse is a clear sequel and cannot be read stand-alone.  Start with "Want" if you're interested in this series, and don't read further since there will be spoilers. 

 Note2:  Again, I read this book as an audiobook, so if I misspell some of the names I apologize.  The book keeps the same audiobook reader as its predecessor for the segments narrated by Zhou, but adds a woman as an additional reader for segments narrated by several other characters.  Both readers are excellent.
--------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Some time has passed since the bombing of Jin Corp, and Zhou and his friends are still traumatized by the loss of Victor in the process.  As a result, Zhou has been living the past months in his rich apartment with Daiyu and has completely separated from his friends, living a life of luxury he could never have imagined while Daiyu attempts to use her wealth and influence to get laws passed to try and repair Taiwan's environment. 

But when Iris comes to Zhou with news that Lingyi is in danger in Shanghai, Zhou follows her there in a heartbeat to save his former boss and good friend.  But the danger is the worst of all, as Lingyi has found herself in the sights once again of Jin, who has already murdered one of Lingyi's oldest friends to get air filtration technology that only Lingyi can unlock.  And distressed over the loss of Victor as well as her old friend, Lingyi refuses to leave Shanghai until she can get some sort of vengeance upon Jin and the technology is safely out of Jin's hands.

But Jin has barely seemed to lose a step despite the loss of his corporate headquarters in Taiwan, planning a rich new tower in Shanghai, and worst of all....seems once again to have Daiyu at his side as his potential heir.   Has Zhou's trust in and love for Daiyu all this time been mistaken?  And with this latest job being even more dangerous than the last, will it result in the deaths of all of his friends?
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Want was told solely from Zhou's first person perspective, but it featured a number of side characters who were excellent and who I wanted to see more of.  Ruse actually gives us that, by providing chapters and portions written from the points of view of several of these characters, most prominently Lingyi and Daiyu.  It's still mostly Zhou's story - after the first few chapters from other perspectives, he easily gets at least 2/3 of the remaining book - but the multiple perspectives shown really work and differentiates this book from its predecessor from the beginning.

And those perspectives, as well as the good guy characters who don't get them (Iris & Arun), are really well done.  Zhou remains an excellent character and has grown quite a bit and now has new concerns and problems - for example, whether he can live the life of a You (Rich) Boy alongside Daiyu, whether he can trust her, his guilt over Victor, and his feelings towards his friend as family..etc.  Lingyi was just the special hacker/boss character in the prior book, but here we see the severe stress she suffered from leading a plan that led one of her friends to his death and how it drives her and affects her throughout.  Daiyu now is quite aware of the evil her father is and has to struggle in trying to do good with her money - a struggle that Zhou has issues with due to how it seems to legitimize her father.  And even again Iris and Arun get some development here.

The resulting plot is again not incredibly notable, although the tension is high throughout - something which isn't helped by Zhou making at least one incredibly dumb decision (causing me to scream in the car as I listened to it "What are you doing?!?!"), but it all works.  The conflict between Daiyu and Zhou in their approaches to Jin moreover adds a theme of trying to improve the world via incrementalism or revolution to some extent (the book's answer appears to be "both", to some extent), which is a solid addition.  And a continuing negative is again how evil Jin is is kind of cartoonish.....but given the state of certain leaders in the world, such a person is a lot more believable as a villain than they used to be.

Overall, Ruse is very good, and I think maybe a little better than Want, now that I think about it.  If you liked Want, you'll enjoy this book and it's well worth your time, providing an excellent follow-up and a satisfying ending for this whole set of characters.

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