This is a conflicted review. On the one hand, I enjoyed the historical part. I can also see what the writer is trying to achieve. However, I didn't really enjoy the modern part. I wanted to like this much more than I actually did.

It started off well and I can sort of empathise. Though I studied Mandarin for 12 years, it is far from fluent. I took a job that required that I peruse the Mandarin newspapers for relevant articles and then summarise them in English. This was when Google Translate was still in its early stages and not as sophisticated. Also, the newspapers often did not publish the digital version in time and I could not copy and paste the text. By the time I took this job it was about 12 years since I had to read the language so it was very rusty. I survived. I surprised myself reading this by being able to read about 85% of the Mandarin and did not resort to an app. 

I really got into the story of the sociopathic Emperor and his minotaurian tale. However, once #badchinese got to China and the whole ghost city used by the Emperor's modern counterpart, Baby Bao, for his own sociopathic fantasies, my interest started waning. I know that this is mainly due to my own personal peeve with modern China and all that it stands for. I also have a thing about not having to pander to one's ancestral roots. Just because I am born a certain race, doesn't mean I love everything about my "people". This doesn't make me an anglophile or xenophobic, I just believe in my own values, regardless of my birth culture. 

So, while I recognise the writerly value of this book and am very grateful for having been gifted a copy by the author himself, I have given it less than 4 stars because I would not classify it as "great". It is almost great but certainly good.