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This is more a vague summary of bits of British and Chinese history over the last couple of hundred years than a look at the relations between the two countries. There's no focus to it, no thesis being examined, no argument being made, just "this happened, then this happened" for a couple of hundred pages. I spotted one glaring error - Chris Patten wasn't appointed Governor of Hong Kong by Thatcher in 1992, because she'd been out of power since 1990 - and some of the statistics he quotes about China's growth are suspect and appear to contradict each other. There are interesting books to be written - or have already been written - about a lot of the subjects here, this fails to be interesting about any of them.

Including for completeness!

Didn't really click with the characters, too much people saying how terrible they were and doing terrible things because they were working for something they couldn't explain. Then the explanation is very obvious, and has the logic of a game rather than a story.

Was interesting to read, and got some useful ideas from it about apocalyptic endings and visions, but it is quite a densely argued piece of literary critique that makes a lot of references to many different texts I wasn't familiar with.

Recommended by a friend following some earlier reading (Heart of Maleness) this is an interesting feminist angle on popular science tropes. It takes aim at the science, from Darwin onwards, that's been used to "prove" women are inferior to men, and that sex differences are somehow innate and unavoidable. Across a range of different areas, Saini exposes how some big scientific findings are based on very shaky ground. Weak science and patriarchal beliefs have led people to take tiny studies and blow them up out of all importance to reinforce stereotypes, and those working to correct and challenge these assumptions are left to the fringes. Ocasionnally a bit frustrating as she takes her time to debunk flaws that are obvious in the way she describes a study, and she perhaps gives some people a bit too much of the benefit of the doubt, but still well worth reading.

Though I guess that's what you could say about humanity as a whole, right?

Anyway, this is a story about how the next million years of humanity begin with a shipwreck on one of the Galapagos islands, leading to the few people surviving it becoming the ancestors of the next stages of humanity, all narrated by a ghost. But of course, being Vonnegut, it's not really about that, it's about evolution and the dead end of thinking our "big brains" will solve everything for us. There's some good lines and some interesting thoughts in there - this is Vonnegut, after all - but it's slight and unfocused, unsure of what to focus its attention on.

Rare for me to find a sequel more interesting than the original, but this was one of those occasions. It takes the world-building from Memory Called Empire and then allows the characters to step further forward in the story. After being at the heart of the Empire before, we're now at the fringe, where it faces a threat and a potential war, with politics at play that might lead to a catastrophe. Really enjoyed watching how this all played out and the way the characters grew and developed through it.