Some readers may enjoy the meta-ness, as well as Harrison’s brash confidence in the privileged, fast-moving world he describes. By the volume’s end, the latest Mandate “had firmly ensconced himself in the place of the world’s next powerful elite,” who would reign over the globe’s most powerful country, constituting “a reincarnation of dynastic proportions.” The work explores this ensconcing in a narrative with several main themes: a man’s guilt over a car accident that kills his daughter and her friend the sorority young men whose lives encompass high finance, nightclubs, and business deals sex, romance, and political intrigue, including blackmail and bribery and overlapping versions of the same characters and events. Jews call him the Messiah the Mongols (i.e., the Chinese) call him a Mandate.
A foreword explains that a new leader will arise. In this outing, set around the turn of the millennium, the author mixes up a similar brew. In Butterflies: The Strange Metamorphosis of Fact & Fiction In Today’s World (2015), Harrison wrote about an exclusive Shanghai sorority and the young men in its circle, while other chapters described a Creator and something called the Logos Simulation. A novel follows the fortunes of young people in Shanghai and New York City who seek status, wealth, and sex against the backdrop of dynastic reincarnation.
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