Nine Dash Line

by Emily Saso

A U.S. Navy intelligence officer, Jess is serving on an aircraft carrier—the first woman ever to do so—until she gets assigned a top-secret mission. When the mission goes wrong, she’s rescued by Philippine Navy sailors who’ve been strategically moored for far too long. Things get complicated when their unhinged leader declares Jess an angel sent to save them from their disastrous mission. But Jess is no angel; she’s done horrible things and she’s desperate for absolution.

The only person who can give it to her is Zi Shan. Exiled to a politically contentious coral sprawl called Mischief Reef, he’s been tasked with turning the reef into an island by dredging sand from the ocean floor. Each day he follows the bizarre directives from his fellow castoff, enduring the memories that torment him, and awaits a helicopter home to his daughter. But when Jess washes up on his shore, everything turns to chaos.

Inspired by real but re-imagined events, the mysteries of fate unfold dramatically in Nine Dash Line. What brought Jess and Zi Shan to Mischief Reef? What binds them together? And how in the world will they ever get home?

Genres: Canada, Novels

266 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2022

About the author

Emily Saso's voice, dark humour and style have been compared to Margaret Atwood. Her debut novel, The Weather Inside, is about a former Jehovah’s Witness trying to save her marriage and herself. Her new novel, Nine Dash Line, is a literary thriller about two mysterious people stranded in the South China Sea.

Reviews

[Kerry Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most fascinating, original, well crafted novel I’ve read in a long time is Nine Dash Line, by Emily Saso, a novel whose premise—I will admit—didn’t grab me immediately, because it’s about a guy who’s stranded alone on an atoll in the South China sea, exiled by the Chinese communist government. All the things I tend to like best about novels are impossible in novels about people stranded in the middle of the sea—family drama, elaborate dinner scenes, bookshop settings, etc.—even if the guy on a atoll shares parallel chapters with a female US Navy officer who—for reasons as convoluted as the first character’s exile—has found herself marooned in an inflatable life boat, the sea around her rife with sharks and mines, about to wash up aboard a rusted out vessel belonging to the Philippines.

So how is this author going to pull this one off, you might ask?

To which I’ll reply with one single word: MASTERFULLY.

The book itself, it grabbed me at once, because oh my gosh, this is such a good one, built on the kind of premise that has to be pitch perfect to work at all, but it really is. By the end of the first chapter, I was absolutely hooked, riveted, Saso’s plotting and prose casting an incredible spell that held to the final page, resulting in such a strange and expansive novel, a story of geopolitics, about war, and ideology, and pain, and longing, and the necessity of living by one’s wits to survive impossible situations, about the impossible becoming possible, for better and for worse.

I’ve got no THIS BOOK MEETS THAT BOOK comparison here, because I’ve never read another quite like this one, a book so deftly imagined that I’m in awe of Saso’s talent, mind-blown by the creative skills required to even begin to imagine a book like this, let alone the technique required to execute it.

All I can tell you is that you’ve got to read it.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Saso’s frenetic novel Nine Dash Line takes the reader back to the late 1980’s and the tense and tangled post- Tiananmen geopolitics of Southeast Asia. Jess Toth is an American intelligence officer assigned to an aircraft carrier (the first female to receive such a distinction in the history of the US Navy). But Jess’s backstory is difficult and her trajectory up the ranks anything but smooth. Jess’s mother, Dorothy, joined the Navy during WW2 with the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), but stayed on after the war to work in intelligence under the command of Admiral Grover Sacks. After her mother’s sudden and untimely death from a burst aneurysm, teenage Jess transferred her love for her mother to Sacks, her regard for him approaching reverence. As Jess enters her twenties, Sacks, aware of her potential, mindful of the sway he has over her, persuades Jess to join the service. To say that Jess is damaged goods is an understatement: her mother’s early death (which she witnessed) has left her traumatized and angry. She is, however, devoted to Sacks and willingly submits to his bidding. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Zi Shan has come of age in a tiny Chinese mountain village isolated from the politics of the day and the brutalities the Communists are inflicting on their own people. After achieving, at a young age, a kind of legendary fame as “The Boy Who Climbed the Sky Ladder,” he is forcefully recruited by the Chinese Communist Party, becoming, in his ignorance, a devoted acolyte of the country’s leader. Later, he falls in love with a young woman named Yijun and marries her. They have a daughter. Zi Shan’s life is moving forward, but it’s happening as China is undergoing a transformation. By this time, it is the late 1980’s, Mao is long dead, and the country’s aging leadership is watching, seemingly powerless to stem the tide, as a popular uprising erupts around demands for greater freedoms. In Beijing, the movement converges on the city centre, with protesters occupying Tiananmen Square. Yijun, against her husband’s wishes, joins the protest, with tragic consequences, and Zi Shan’s life is changed forever. The story that Emily Saso has fashioned from this intricate setup generates great tension and moves via numerous twists and turns toward a confrontation between Jess and Zi Shan on a remote atoll in the South China Sea, where Zi Shan has been exiled and Jess has been delivered by Sacks on a secret mission to rescue the Chinese national and convince him to defect to the US. Along the way, both Jess and Zi Shan overcome enormous challenges, conquering self-doubt and proving their mettle time and time again. The story focuses on the struggles of these two individuals—from incompatible worlds and raised with different sets of values—to overcome the obstacles placed in their way and reach a detente. But looming over the action, and drawing everything together, is the craving for hegemony of two world superpowers, both determined to exert control over a corner of the globe that is crucial to their military, political and economic goals. Saso’s second novel (after The Weather Inside, 2016) delivers plenty of thrills and action, even a few diverting flashes of hilarity. But in their more contemplative moments both Jess and Zi Shan are given separate opportunities to consider how past events and some questionable decisions have shaped their lives and brought them to a terrifying impasse. In Nine Dash Line, Emily Saso has written a truly original work of fiction, a rousing and disturbing novel inspired by history, richly reimagined and stunningly executed.

[Jamie Tennant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book. It's an exceptionally well-paced literary thriller with that never quite does what you expect it's going to do. It's filled with interesting characters and their fascinating back stories, and its two main characters are as inherently similar as they are wildly different in other ways. The setting - a reef in the South China Sea - is especially well-rendered, sharp and vivid (much like her prose!) breathtaking and anxiety-inducing at the same time. A great read.

[Juli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was first attracted to this story for the same reason the author was. Mischief Reef, a real place, a photograph from above. The name itself, and the curiosity of such a place, certainly made for an intriguing jumping off point. I am not one for stories that explore either the military or political prisoners but Saso weaved together interesting back stories and present moment predicaments that kept me intrigued throughout. The flow is well paced and full of surprises, humour and humanity.

[CA · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was... Odd... I think it was written in prose which gave the book this off kilter air all through reading it. A unsettling tale of two people lost in themselves and lost in the south China Sea in a political situation neither understand. Interesting read, but a harder style of writing to digest.