The only problem with this novel is that you quickly come to suffer from overload. Just about every current threat to peace in the Asia-Pacific region is brought into play somewhere in the novel, and the world reels into disaster with all the great Asian themes playing at full volume.
In one sense this book is simply a fast-paced political thriller, setting out to frighten the reader with its jigsaw of international rivalries, strikes and counter-strikes.
But it does have a serious aspect to it as well.
What really fascinates, and appalls the author can be seen from the way he makes the various world leaders almost all admirable, amiable and well-intentioned. China's head of state is an international sophisticate, Britain's a congenial, hard-working modern statesman, America's a good-natured optimist. Pakistan's and India's leaders are old friends. Yet despite this, the world finally collapses into devastation on every hand.
What Hawksley is saying, then, is that good intentions aren't enough. If the weapons are there, some dark force moving in human society may see them triggered. It's not that some atavistic savagery in the human heart will surface. It's rather that combinations of events, strategies already put in place in research papers and blueprints, will -- or could -- combine to out-maneuver statesmen conscientiously working for cooperation, harmony and peace.
It's not "evil" in the old sense that may prevail, but an irreversible logic built into political systems in conflict-free times, things people never seriously contemplated ever being put into practice.
Humphrey Hawksley's previous fictional successes -- Dragon Fire and (with Simon Holberton) Dragon Strike -- have featured China. Here he has specialist knowledge, having set up the BBC's first TV bureau in the country in 1994.
Is there a lighter side to this new novel? Yes, occasionally. Hawksley's insider knowledge as a political journalist is said to be legendary. As a result some details simply astonish. One out of many concerns the domestic arrangements in 10, Downing Street, the British prime minister's office and official London home. It is, Hawksley speculates, probably the only head-of-state's residence in the world where the occupant and his wife have to do their own washing-up.
This book's underlying assumption, then, is that we're even now living on the edge of disaster. Whether this is in actual fact true is more or less anybody's guess.
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