A review by joannawnyc
The Story of the Stone, Volume V: The Dreamer Wakes, Chapters 99-120 by Gao E, Cao Xueqin

4.0

The change in authorship is very evident here as is a tendency to want to tidy everything up. It's not exactly a disappointing conclusion, but I had the sense that I could have written it it, or indeed, anyone who had read the first 3 volumes. That mysterious feel of an intelligence guiding events from behind the scenes and moving everything towards a conclusion you can't even imagine is gone. Instead the narrative builds on what you already know and heads toward a predetermined conclusion that feels arbitrarily plucked from a host of possibilities.

Still very much worth reading all 5 volumes, however.