An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

This book is not related to any of the others in the Golden Mountain Chronicles as far as I can tell (and I've reread them all within the last two years or so... most of them this month). So don't go into this expecting a story revisiting any previous characters or storylines.

Parts of the book reminded me of Amy Tan's novels (mother vs daughter, born in China vs born in America conflicts). Not in a bad way, just in way that felt obvious to me. I was reading and then I was thinking, "This is the same stuff Amy Tan writes about" and then I was back in Yep's story. It didn't feel cliche to me, it felt more like, a lot of Chinese people probably experienced these generational problems.

As with the Golden Mountain Chronicles I enjoyed the modern day bits more than the historical. There are some instances of emotional and physical abuse in the book, especially early on. I thought they were pretty well handled, but I also have no personal experience dealing with abuse.

Yep does play into one of my biggest pet peeves. At the end of the book there is a new generation of kids that are half Chinese/half white. And of course one has blonde hair and one has blue eyes (or something like that) because that's what all half Asian/half white people look like in books. I know that half Asian/half white kids exist with very distinct "white" and/or "Asian" features, but most of the half Asian/half white people I know have brown hair and brown eyes.

Dragon's of Silk is worth checking out if you're a fan of Yep, but I wish it weren't included in the Golden Mountain Chronicles. It just doesn't fit.