- This Australian novel is an absolutely absorbing read. It's a political drama set in Canberra, Hong Kong and Beijing. A little congested at times with easily forgotten detail, but it's totally worth hanging in to the very satisfying and shocking conclusion.
- The central characters are Sebastian (the Senator and Assistant Minister of Defence and Foreign Affairs), Charlie (his Chief of Staff), Zheng (the Chinese corporate high flyer), and Chloe (Zheng's daughter).
- Also featured is ASIO and its Director-General, McCubbin. He's a ruthless and nasty piece of work who also happens to be Sebastian's father-in-law.
- The drama starts early in the novel. Sebastian shockingly commits suicide after receiving a message from Zheng which says 'It's done.'
- We're taken back to the 1980's and 90's. The student Sebastian and the Chinese girl Chloe had fallen deeply in love, but Chloe's father, Zheng, is outraged that her daughter is 'mixing with foreigners'. The long relationship between the couple is central to the novel but they had to keep it secret.
- The Tiananmen Square massacre and the student protests about China's clamping down on democracy in Hong Kong are key elements in the story. Zheng hated his daughter's involvement in the protests. He was a determined and ambitious ideologue committed in every way to the Chinese Communist regime.
- As the story develops over the decades it becomes more intricate and absorbing. We're sucked into the current challenge Australia and the US face by the power of China and the possible threat it poses to Taiwan. McCubbin has no doubt China will invade Taiwan, and attack the US military bases in the region, including those in Australia. The US would be pressured into responding with force. ‘The rallying fury of 9/11’ will likely erupt in the US and it will be forced into a full scale war which will inevitably go nuclear.
- McCubbin would be ‘delighted by the actualisation of a long held hypothesis’.
- But is he right?
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