Stamping Butterflies

This book was my holiday reading on the trip through Vietnam and Cambodia. Mostly it was for reading while on planes or in airports, since I didn't plan on having a lot of downtime while over there. But a day or so by the pool in Mui Ne saw me get through it all.

The book is by Jon Grimwood - an author I hadn't heard of before. I came across him while browsing through LibraryThing and saw some good reviews. I'm glad I did, because I thought it was a pretty good book.


The story is convoluted, so may not have been the best choice for a relaxing holiday novel. On the other hand, these are the sorts of books that I find really interesting to read, so it still worked for me. The story is told in three parts. There's one stream set in Marrakech in the 1970's. Then there's one set in the current day or very near future, revolving around an assassination attempt on the most popular US president in history (that's not GW Bush, obviously enough, even though the book was written in 2004). And finally there's the story set in the far future in an empire of 2023 worlds.

I thought all three parts worked well. The first two streams became linked fairly early on in the book, sharing characters and history. It was well written and realistic in describing its events and locations. His writing style is descriptive and detailed, while not slowing down the pace of the book. The link with the third, future, stream wasn't obvious until very close to the end of the book. Hints were dropped before then, of course, but the link wasn't obvious to me until the end. The suspense was maintained very well right to the final pages.

Overall, I thought the first two story streams were the best. I couldn't relate quite as well to the future stream or characters. I think that was because they were the ones I felt the least sympathy for - particularly the Emperor. They just didn't seem as realistic as the others.

I enjoyed this book. I will be looking for other books by the same author now, as I think he's definitely one to read more of.

Stamping Butterflies, by Jon Courtenay Grimwood