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Mankind has finally achieved the ambitious wonder of a fully functional space elevator. Grounded on a small island in Southeast Asia, people and materiel can now transfer back and forth (within a matter of hours) between a platform in orbit and terra firma. Never mind that various ethnic groups and historical communities have been either erased or displaced; mankind can now do anything! We are literally on top of the world!
Managing this colossus, however, is a completely different thing altogether. Potential profits for transportation appear to be infinite, and the corporation set up to handle all of the details could very well end up deciding the fate of every living thing on the globe.
This dystopian tale from Korea focuses its entire storyline on the corporate espionage involved in the attempts to control the elevator and a handful of individuals within those ranks. There are myriad sci-fi elements of travel, mind control, data dispersion, and even human memory over-writes that all add to the drama.
But we never get to see (or ride) the elevator until the final pages. In fact, by that moment, there have been so many crosses and double-crosses that the reader is not completely certain who the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) really are. After turning the final page, I sat there for a few minutes wondering what just happened, and after a few weeks, I am still not sure.
Although the author(s) provide a genealogical tree in the prologue, I fully admit that once the story was in full motion, I still could not keep up with who was who and how they were related to each other. When flashbacks and deaths occurred, I gave up completely and just hoped to figure it out as it moved along. Location changes and conversations between characters were very abrupt and difficult for me to follow. I may have been moving too quickly (hoping to travel that elevator) or the style may not have translated well into English.
Overall, I found this book to be a disappointment, especially after so many other reviewers had heaped praise on it.
Rated: Mild. A dozen mild instances of profanity, with very superficial mentions of same-gender intimacy, rape and torture.
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