A review by margaretefg
Decoded by Mai Jia

3.0

I liked the historical sweep at the beginning of the novel, the whole family set up of how Rong Jinzhen came to be who and where he was, the politics of late 19th and early 20th century China. It gets more difficult as he becomes the main character because he is so distant and the top secret cryptography makes him even more distant, and then it seemed like it should be over for a long time before it actually ended. Reading it was a bit of a decoding process for me, I guess.