With auspicious timing given China's recent far side success, Robinson's new title visits (though more sporadically than one might expect) a near-future Moon dominated by the Red Chinese.
Starting slowly, it quickly becomes an extended chase as a Chinese "princess", daughter of a high-ranking bureaucrat and illegally pregnant on the Moon, hooks up with an imprisoned American contractor, and both are unwittingly drawn into more terrestrially-based power struggles. Elsewhere, they find unexpected help from a famed Chinese poet cum travel journalist, and a Chinese technician responsible for its Great Fire Wall but now raising a helpful general AI.
Broadly an enjoyable ride, with lots of clever and imaginative sights along the way. The Chinese lunar cities built in ancient lava tubes, and the burgeoning baby AI, in particular, are high points. But the ceaseless chase sometimes becomes a thin way to allow Robinson to show off new ideas rather than a compelling narrative in its own right.
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