"Peace has returned. The year is 2206. After five years of war, the Seven are weak. They have lost three of their members, and the new T'ang are young and inexperienced. Once it was considered inconceivable, but now, down in the lowest levels of the immense City, new currents of unrest have awoken. Currents that threaten to tear Chung Kuo apart.

The fight endures. But the demand for Change is not the only threat to the Seven. Major Howard DeVore will use any means available to destroy them and their world-spanning City. And, from their own ranks, Wang Sau-leyan, appointed T'ang after the suspicious deaths of his father and elder brothers, plots to destroy them from within. The Seven are vulnerable and the forces against them continue to grow...”

The fifth novel in the reconceived Chung Kuo saga, “The Art of War” reads very much like a transitional piece.  That makes a certain amount of sense, given that it was originally just the first half or so of “The Broken Wheel” (the original saga’s second volume), but it also means that it doesn’t stand particularly well as a story in and of itself.  It is only meaningful within the larger context of Chung Kuo.

There is a central theme, however, as put forward by Howard DeVore, the main antagonist of the story, is positioning upon the wei chi board.  DeVore is a master of the game, cold and calculating, and all too willing to use anyone and everyone in his war against the Seven.  Enter the Ping Tiao, a terrorist group big on ambition but mostly small on vision.  DeVore uses the assumption that his Dispersionist movement has died to reshape his strategy.

Meanwhile, the Seven are dealing with an unexpected amount of turmoil among their own ranks.  Three of their members are new and inexperienced, and one of them has been manipulating his way into power since the end of the war.  His machinations and own demands for change, against all tradition, are set against the early days of the unconventional marriage between Li Yuan, son of Europe’s ruler, and Fei Yen.  Fei Yen turns out to be quite adept at her own schemes, which involve wrapping Li Yuan around her little finger.

These plot threads, while not quite intertwining, comprise a large part of this volume, as subtle movements have vast implications over time.  Because it is all about small decisions and actions, there’s not a lot of resolution to anything that is started in this phase of the story.  It’s aftermath and prelude all at once.

The final third of the volume shifts perspective to the Domain, the idyllic valley in England where the “descendants” of the City’s architect, the only ones granted immunity by the Seven and the right to live outside, live out their unusual lives.  Ben Shepherd is now in his late teens, and his mildly schizophrenic perspective is leading him to seek out a new way to experience reality.  He’s also fallen in love with his “sister”, Meg.  This sounds rather odd, but given that Ben is really a clone of sorts of original Shepherd, it’s not quite as it seems.

Ben’s experiments in “art” are a bit unusual, and involve a form of virtual reality that is more and more closely connected to direct access to human consciousness and sensory awareness.  He recognizes that he can’t stay in the Domain and find the answers to his questions, and that friction between his apparent calling and his growing relationship with Meg is surprisingly engaging.  Unfortunately, it also stops before it can progress to the logical next step.

Because of the way that the original material is being re-edited and revised into smaller works, this sort of transitional volume was going to come sooner or later.  Knowing that doesn’t change the fact that there is only the most tenuous of themes throughout this book.  All of this is building to something much bigger, and if it wasn’t for the author’s “sizzle reel” of the events to take place in Book 6, “An Inch of Ashes”, it might feel like the story was already spinning its wheels.  That said, knowing that the story will expand in unexpected ways gives me enough reason to be patient.

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