Customer Reviews

Precious Dragon: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (Detective Inspector Chen Novels)

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Precious Dragon opens slowly and somewhat confusingly, as Williams has to set three or four parallel story-trains into motion. Unlike the first two D.I. Chen books, you definitely shouldn't start here. Even readers who've read the first two book may be doing a bit of head-scratching (and toe-tapping) until she gets all her balls into the air.

But then -- wow! All the cool stuff I've loved in the first two books, and more! Viz, Chen musing on his mortality, aboard the Hell-bound train(!!): "When he died, as a devoted servant of the Goddess Kuan Yin, Most Merciful and Compassionate, he might reasonably expect to enter Heaven. Okay, he'd married a demon. His right-hand man was from Hell. On a previous, unfortunate occasion, he'd used the goddess' sacred image as a battering ram. Good thing she was Merciful and Compassionate..."

The Hell-bound Train! Can there be a more resonant image in SF&F?
Williams' iteration is spectacular: "It was bullet-shaped, black and silver... , coruscated with magnificent ornamentation. Its engine was encased in the head of a centipede: of a kueri, and the name on its side read STORM LORD.

"Wow," Chen remarked. "It's certainly baroque."

Which isn't a bad description of William's book. Plus, it made me smile a lot. Liz Williams is a Jack Vance fan, and it shows. I haven't quite decided who Zhu Irzh, "large as life and twice as unnatural," reminds me of... Not quite as finely-crafted as the first two, in my judgement, but if you've come this far, you won't want to stop now.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman