Nov 20, 2022
“They didn’t go very far. Daniel led the way, navigating the Beijing streets with an easy familiarity, until they were at one of the many hutongs in the heard of the city, the narrow street crowded with vendors and the sounds of summertime.”
-from Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li, pg. 39
#vfd#lemony snicket#asoue#a series of unfortunate events#atwq#very far daniel#book#grace d li#this was a very frustrating heist novel#there was no sense of internal logic to it at all#plotholes everywhere#the premise: five chinese-american students are tasked by a chinese megacorporation#to steal back chinese antiquities from museums#it is never explained satisfactorily why these students are chosen or what motivates them to complete it#the antiquities in real life are missing but in the book they are conveniently held in musuems#and the heist sequences are cribbed from real-life heists of those museums in a waythat feels very lazy#cannot recommend this in good faith#however it does pay a lot of attention to the chinese-american experience and critique the western worlds' looting of antiquities#and also critiques the present art and museum industry#I enjoyed those parts and thought they were well done#very#far#daniel
