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The Lives of Tao (Tao, #1)

Wesley Chu

Start date: August 1, 2013

Finish date: August 31, 2013

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Feb 19, 2016 Laura Hughes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-favourites

I had a LOT of fun reading this one. The premise is intriguing, the story is well-paced and the protagonist is insanely likeable. In a nutshell, 'The Lives of Tao' is an underdog tale filled with action and humour, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone. Seriously, it's worth reading just for the internal dialogue between main character Roen and his alien hitch-hiker, Tao. ...more

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Aug 26, 2016 Sam Hawke added it

The novel begins with the death of a Bondesque secret agent at the hands of a trusted ally; but he’s no ordinary agent but rather the host of Tao, an alien symbiont who lives within him. Tao, an ancient being who has inhabited many historical figures, is forced to find a new host in a hurry, and ends up in an out of shape IT worker, Roen Tan. The story follows Roen/Tao as they try together to turn him into secret agent material before Tao’s enemies find him.

The premise of the story is a lot of f The novel begins with the death of a Bondesque secret agent at the hands of a trusted ally; but he’s no ordinary agent but rather the host of Tao, an alien symbiont who lives within him. Tao, an ancient being who has inhabited many historical figures, is forced to find a new host in a hurry, and ends up in an out of shape IT worker, Roen Tan. The story follows Roen/Tao as they try together to turn him into secret agent material before Tao’s enemies find him.

The premise of the story is a lot of fun, and reminded me strongly of a much-beloved TV show, Chuck: both feature socially awkward main characters who, after the death of a competent spy, end up with powerful material in their head and a hyper confident female handler to whip them into shape. It’s an idea with a lot of potential.

The book has a lot of things going for it. The pace is mostly good, it’s often funny, the action is great, martial arts are not lazily described or expressed (as a long term martial artist, I really appreciate a book which understands and acknowledges the difference in styles and how fighters can find a match to the right one for them) and the development of series potential well thought through. In technical terms the prose is easy to read, if sometimes clunky, but it’s a first book, so I imagine this is probably ironed out in later ones.

My major gripes were with the emotional arcs of the story. Tthere is a storyline about Roen’s lack of investment in Tao’s quest which felt like it should have been a serious peak of the book, but completely fizzled. Likewise, while his relationships with Tao is well done and highly enjoyable (their back and forth conversations in his head are a highlight of the book), this only serves to contrast with the ones with the women, which are underdeveloped. One female character (the ‘Sarah’, if you’re a Chuck-watcher) is given a kind of ‘mysterious competent female on a pedestal’ treatment, and Roen’s workplace love interest gets minimal page-time and basically no personality at all. I also grew increasingly frustrated with Roen’s man-boy personality. This is not a complaint about the writing, because I know he accurately reflects a real personality type, who really do think about life and women in this way, but it grated on me. Essentially, I like a good flawed hero as much as anyone, but Roen lacks the kind of genuine warmth and earnest charm that makes Chuck endearing as a ‘hopeless nerd’ sort of character. At one point, during which a prospective father in law gives a nauseating speech to Roen about men growing more appealing as they age (like fine wine, ugh) while women hit their peak between 20-30, and this speech is presented as being wise and not revolting, I did make a loud angry groan and put the book down to complain for a while to … well, no-one, actually, because I was sitting alone on the beach at the time, but the hermit crab on the ground probably enjoyed my dark muttering.

Anyway, complaints aside, I finished and enjoyed the book overall, and will read more – I’m just hopeful that the kinks in the story and the writing improve substantially in the later books, because he’s obviously got a great eye (fingers?) for action and entertaining concepts. ...more

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