Decoded

Mai Jia

Rong is a young boy with autism and a proclivity for math. His mentor pushes him to challenge himself in problem solving and patterns and the regularity of the problems becomes a comfortable/safe place to retreat. When he is recruited into a special military unit charged with codes and code breaking, Rong is finally at home. But when he finds himself entering into an addictive battle to break some unbreakable codes and simultaneously maintain his humanity, finding balance is not easy. It seems Jia's aim is to open a new window into a life as an autistic man. Unfortunately, the actual novel is not as engaging as this treatment sounds like it could be. I have not read enough translated works to be familiar with the feel of a translation, but my "feel" on this one is that something is lost in the translation.
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Geek Love

Katherine Dunn

A family of carnival sideshow freaks is the center of this novel. The father is apparently an amateur experimental geneticist who used radiation, chemicals and any other mutagen he could think of on each of his children when they were in utero to create the next big sideshow sensation. I am not sure if the voyeuristic nature of looking in on the family was supposed to be appealing or if trying to see the humanity in the "freaks" was the point. I was not particularly interested in the former and the later was not compelling storytelling.
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The Cowboy and the Cossack

Claire Huffaker

Originally published in 1973, this is a classic western novel set in eastern Russia. The story follows a band of Montana cowboys hired to drive a herd of cattle into the interior of Siberia. They discover from the beginning that in addition to all the traditional hardship associated with driving a few hundred head of longhorns, they also need to navigate the political situation in a new place, from the bribes needed to initially dock their boat to the nuances associated with each local bureaucracy. The bulk of the story follows this band of American Cowboys and their relationship with their Cossack (i.e. Russian cowboys) escort. This could easily have devolved into cross cultural hi-jinks, but instead Huffaker takes an approach which is able to authentically explore cross cultural differences and similarities between these two groups. Within the rugged, individualistic, zero-emotion world of cowboys we are exposed to a surprisingly vulnerable and introspective look at friendship, loyalty and duty. And like any well written western, the action and suspense lasts right up to the last few pages.

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