Daniel Christensen's Reviews > The Skull Mantra

Crime novel set in Tibet. Lead character a Chinese political prisoner in a prison otherwise full of Tibetan prisoners (mostly for religious conscience purposes it would seem).
Very heavily trades on the themes of the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
What struck me about this was the 'world building'. In some ways it reminded me of a science fiction novel, where the world was painstakingly described.
The author had an incredible amount to tell, but I found that the context loomed so large that it overtook the crime story.
I also found the characterisations a little limp - if you were Chinese you were a variation on chain-smoking party-apparatchik baddy, if you were a Tibetan you were a variation on inscrutable mystic.
No guessing where the author's sympathies lie. Recent pieces in The Economist on Chinese occupation of Western China reinforce this characterisation, but some exploration of the downsides of the Tibetan theocracy might have lent a bit more suspense (i.e. if we could entertain the possibility that Tibetan mystics weren't all goodies all the time).