As far as I know, the ending is the only thing that's going to be reworked. The original books are going to be split into smaller chunks. I've never quite been able to figure out if there is/will be a way to map the old series to the new one such as: old book 2 = new book 4 & 5.
I liked it. It's a massive adventure with many convoluted political subplots and lots of court intrigue, but anyone who knows me, knows that my love for huge sprawling series started to wane several years ago. The "World-Building" in them annoys me (
I want to build the world, so the author only needs to
hint at it, I'll do the rest; thank you very much). If you love World Building and looooooong series, you'll probably enjoy Chung Kuo.
There's no need to wait on the re-releases. And in fact, the first prequel slightly spoils some things that happen early on in Book One, IMO. So I would recommend reading them in published order (I always do!)... save the prequels for last.
It needed a reworked ending badly. Wingrove had more books planned, but his publisher told him to wrap it up in book 8. I think they were seeing a drop-off in sales. You can imagine how rushed and awkward the final volume felt. But I'm not sure if the solution was to make it even longer.
The length will be daunting, but if that doesn't scare you, I say check it out. One warning though: it's not really a series that you can read one or two books, take a long break and come back to it later. There's quite a bit going on at any given time, so once you have the huge cast and all the various subplots straight in your head... it's best to just push on through. Instead of trying to get back into the swing of things later.
Wow! I wrote too much. Sorry for that.
