*I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

I’d read some of Hao Jingfang’s short stories and really enjoyed them and I’ve had Vagabonds on my shelf for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but when I saw this release marketed as first contact with evidence of alien visitations in the distant past, I knew I had to read it. 

This was a really thought-provoking read but I would hesitate to recommend it widely. I think you would get a lot more out of it if you knew or were familiar with Chinese history and mythology and ways of thinking. A lot of this book is just the philosophical discussions and I found it very fascinating, but it also made it dense and a little slow to read. I question this book being marketed as a thriller, because while there are spy elements and action sequences, that’s not the focus. In fact, I think those fast paced scenes made the philosophical discussions feel even slower, and making the pace of the book feel a bit uneven.

The world is really interesting. It’s futuristic where the Earth is dominated by two powers: the Pacific League and the Atlantic Alliance. There’s AI and space travel and an alien that is just trying to do their job. There’s also an unnecessary love triangle and a couple other tropes that I found common in Chinese writing that I don’t necessarily love. That being said, I love the concept of aliens visiting ancient civilizations and I like the philosophical discussion, and I will always be excited about translated speculative fiction.