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Another book I expected to really enjoy, but ended up disliking.

Set in ancient China around a boy with a knack for forensics. So CSI - hundreds of years ago.

But I had several problems...

First, the hero was supposed to really, really smart. But he wasn't. Most of his giant leaps of inspiration were stupid. And what's worse, most happened because the person he was talking (working against) was an absolute idiot. (The interaction over the sale of his brother's land is a good example of this.)

There is no real cleverness here. It's all too obvious.

Second, the writing was did nothing for me. It was plane and at times confusing (opened with a mean brother then jumped to living in a city and the brother was in the country??? Took me a moment to figure out we'd gone from present time to a long backstory. Right off the bat in the opening too.). More than anything I wanted a deeper POV and more grounding in setting. This could have been medieval europe for all the depth of Chinese culture I received.

Very disappointing.