REVIEW: The Tao Series (Books 1-3) By Wesley Chu

Wesley Chu is a new science fiction author I discovered this year after The Other Half got me one of his books from my Amazon Wishlist. That book was  The Lives of Tao. I had put it on my wishlist because I read this blurb about the book:

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen Tan woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.  

He wasn’t. 

He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes. 

Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well…

It turned out that I liked the first book so much that I devoured it and its two sequels on Kindle within a week! Chu has an easy, breezy style that is very readable and engaging. Additionally, the setting of the books is incredibly compelling: alien entities called Quasings have apparently been occupying humans and influencing humanity's history for eons. Many historical figures of note (Genghis Khan, Galileo, Plato, etc) were able to have an extraordinary impact on the world because they were in constant contact with an advanced alien intelligence. There are two competing factors of Quasings, the Prophus who want to have a symbiotic relationship with humans whom they view as equals and the Genjix who view humans as insignificant hosts and Earth a planet that they intend to colonize and control by any means necessary.

The Tao series consists of three books (The Lives of Tao, The Deaths of Tao and The Rebirths of Tao), which are very different in composition, narrative and impact but they all share Chu's engaging, fast-paced, action-packed, humor-laced writing. This is the best feature of the books, and hopefully will lead to Chu being recognized with the prestigious John W. Campbell award at the 2015 Worldcon this year. Even if he doesn't win, just being nominated should expose many other potential fans like myself to his excellent work. It should also help that he has released two books in 2015 (the third book in the Tao series, as well as a time-travel thriller called Time Salvager which is not set in the Tao universe at all, an indication of the young author's versatility and potential longevity.

The Lives of Tao is primarily a story of redemption starring Roen Tan, a sci-fi nerd's everyman who is overweight, shy around women and stuck in a job he hates at the beginning of the book whose life  is irrevocably changed when he gets accidentally merged with the alien Quasing intelligence named Tao. From that moment on (which happens pretty early in the book), we are thrust into a fast-moving story that is propelled by the escalating war between the Prophus and Genjix that involves tactics and weapons reminiscent of a violent spy thriller. I enjoyed The Lives of Tao a lot, even if as a married gay guy I did not fully identify with Roen's struggle (amusingly well-documented by Chu in the book) to transform himself from a straight geeky slob with self-esteem issues to a fit, deadly agent fighting for the Prophus cause. For example, there are many pages of description of the hard work and training and dieting that Roen is subject to in order  to improve himself and change his life; in the end I was still somewhat doubtful about the rapidity with which Roen progressed from schlub to stud. (Then again should one really be quibbling about "realism" in a book that has a premise which involves nearly immortal alien beings that can occupy and communicate symbiotically with human brains?) I really enjoyed the interaction between Roen and Tao as they get to know each other and work together to try to contribute as best they can to the fight against the evil Genjix. I like the fact that Chu also shows us that the Prophus side (whom we as human readers are expected to identify with since Tao is a Prophus member) has its problems and deficiencies as well as giving us first-person perspectives of the villainous Genjix (who believe that Quasings are superior, god-like beings and human lives are expendable). While the book celebrates mindless fun, so that even when Roen does actually "get the girl" in the end, this does not mean that everyone lives happily ever after. It is the nuanced portrayal of several issues like this in the book generally and the Quasings specifically which lifts The Lives of Tao into being more than just an exciting, enjoyable read.

If you have not read The Lives of Tao I encourage you to do so before continuing to read this review because spoilers follow.

BEWARE! SPOILERS! STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1!

BEWARE! SPOILERS! STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1!

The Deaths of Tao continues the story several years after the events of the first book.
Roen has separated from his wife Jill (one of the girls he was lusting after in The Lives of Tao) and now they have a 5-year-old kid named Cameron who lives with Jill's parents in a suburb of San Diego while Jill (along with her Quasing Baji) tries to implement the Prophus agenda as the chief of staff to a United States Senator in Washington, D.C. However, Roen is not only persona non grata with Jill but also with the Prophus hierarchy overall. In the intervening years since the events of The Lives of Tao the war has not gone well for the Prophus side, and they are not happy that Roen took matters into his own hands and went rogue in trying to suss out exactly what is the evil end game of the Genjix. The second book in the Tao series is a more adult, complicated work; this can be seen in the expanded list of important characters: the Genjix human host named Enzo, who has been bred and trained to be the perfect human vessel for Zoras, one of the oldest and most respected Quasings; Jill and her Prophus Quasing Baji; and Jill's bodyguard Marco. In addition, the second book resonated more strongly with me because the stakes involved are so much higher. In the first book, the primary tension was about discovering whether our protagonist (Roen) would succeed or not. In the second book, there are multiple protagonists with competing plans and in addition to discovering which team (Enzo and the Genjix or Roen/Jill and the Prophus) will succeed because the fate of the Earth and humanity depends on the result. The action is ratcheted up to a fever pitch while the body count goes up and up so when we get to the end I was literally both rushing to turn the page but also afraid of what would be revealed about the fates of my favorite characters. And that, in a nutshell, demonstrates just one of the many ways The Deaths of Tao effectively engages the reader and makes this a book you will be happy that your read.

If you have not read  The Deaths of Tao  I encourage you to do so before continuing to read this review because spoilers follow.

BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD! 

STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 2: THE DEATHS OF TAO!

BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD! 

STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 2: THE DEATHS OF TAO!

The Rebirths of Tao continues the story a decade after the events of the second book The Deaths of Tao. Roen's near-death experience at the end of The Deaths of Tao means that he is no longer a Quasing host, because while he was clinically dead Tao was able to exit Roen and enter his son Cameron, who was just a kid at the time. In The Deaths of Tao Cameron is now fifteen-going-on-sixteen with all the incumbent teenaged angst that brings. Roen is the first known human to survive losing a host but with Jill's "hail mary" move of revealing the existence of the symbiotic alien intelligences called Quasings to humanity as a whole things have gotten bad for both the Genjix and Prophus Quasing factions as the governments of the world have used Genjix-developed monitoring technology to hunt down and either incarcerate or exterminate human hosts with Quasing symbionts. The Genjix are still in a stronger global position in their war with the Prophus, with control over most of the world's powerful countries (China, Russia, Western Europe) while neither Genjix nor Prophus controls the United States and all Quasing vessels are considered  enemies of the state. The years between the books have been rough for the Tan clan (although it looks like personally things between Jill and Roen are better than ever since they have been raising their child together and they are still happily married). Because the family consists of two Quasing hosts, they have been essentially on the run for most of Cameron's life, especially considering that the Prophus have essentially lost their war with with Genjix. (I think  that some television show or graphic novels depicting the events that happen between the books in the Tao series would be an engrossing story. Wesley Chu, call your agent!) The stakes in the third volume are larger (and smaller) than those described in the first two books. It's become clear now that Tao is the real main character of the books, not Roen (although since Roen and Tao were inseparable in the first two books it was easy to conflate the two). On the larger scale it becomes clear that the Genjix are working on plans that will irrevocably change the relationship Quasings have with humans and the planet Earth. On the smaller scale, since Tao is now inside and interacting with Cameron and there are wide swathes of the book that read like Young Adult (YA) fiction as Cameron tries to navigate high school and hormones while he is also being trained and prepared by his three adult caregivers (Jill, Roen and Tao) to be a future Genjix agent (and a responsible adult). Chu conducts these scenes in a way that makes you think he has a strong future ahead of him if he decides to enter the YA market full bore but for an adult sci-fi fan like myself these sections might drop you out of the narrative flow. This is the first of  two not insignificant quibbles I had with The Rebirths of Tao. The other aspect of the book that I felt was a potential mistake by the author was his inclusion of faux Tao-like thoughts in Roen's stream of consciousness. Basically, even though the decision was made to separate Roen from Tao in The Deaths of Tao the author still made use of Tao's wit and wisdom to help Roen in the third book through the device of "memory." In my mind this is unfair. It's like killing off a character in one book only to revive them in the next. In the grand scheme of things this is a minor quibble. The Rebirths of Tao has numerous strong action scenes and again it is enlivened by having access to first-person accounts from the Genjix side although this time it seems that is done just to demonstrate how purely evil and misguided they are. The book ends on a note which satisfactorily resolves a number of plots but definitely leaves room for more stories involving (most of) these characters. This is a good thing, because I would love to spend more time with Tao and friends in the future!

Title: The Lives of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: April 30, 2013.
Date Read: May 24, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

Title: The Deaths of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: October 29, 2013.
Date Read: May 30, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A-.

Title: The Rebirths of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 512 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: April 7, 2015.
Date Read: May 31, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.75/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.