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I had high hopes for The Corpse Reader, which was described as a tale of rudimentary forensic science being employed by a bright young peasant in imperial China, but I think I'm gonna quit it. A decapitation is revealed in the foreword, the protag's brother looks guilty but there's something fishy afoot, and from there on in it's just been one crisis after another for the protag as he sets his mind to clearing the brother's name. I usually LOVE historical fiction and I'm fascinated by the history of science and medicine as well, but this one's not really living up to the description. [SPOILERS]
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The brother is tortured and killed in custody; the protagonist's parents' house is burned down with them in it; the family savings are stolen; the local bigwig wants the family's land so the protag must flee with his sickly little sister with only some some rice, ham and a few coins to his name; the protag convinces a boat captain to grant them passage and when he's left to guard the boat he's drugged by a prostitute and the boat is stolen---with his sister still on it; and the last bit I read saw the prostitute threatening to throw the sickly little sister into the disease-ridden river unless everyone else on the boat gives her all their money and belongings. Cripes, I didn't sign up for a tragedy!

I'm just not willing to keep on being bummed out by these overlong and needless misadventures indefinitely in the hopes that when the author finally gets back to the forensic science plotline, it will have been worth the depressing (yet still kind of boring) wait.