I wouldn't really call this work a novel or fiction, but a documentary--even though the characters, the plots, the stage where it all happened are made up and semi-fictional, it is distinctively written in documental style, like someone is filming MC's career as a farmer for academic purpose: because you can read everything MC thought and every step he took as detailedly as possible, to the degree that you will know the exact weight of each agricultural product. It reminds me of the business cases I read in college: realistic, narrative records that take down all the information about how people start their business and make decisions that is useful in a business research sense. That's my general impression of this book, a business case about a farming enterprenuer in fictional world.
Which leads me to the problems. Obviously, you have to give credits to author's extraordinary knowledge of an amazingly wide range of subjects--It's rare and exciting, as a Chinese myself, to see someone who's so familiar with our culture. This requires a great amount of research, something that only someone with the spirit of old-time naturalists and a pure, noble curiosity can achieve. However, the core nature of novel--this form of literature work--is drama, theatricality, conflicts, suspense, which is something this book is lacking. The author focuses too much on presenting the details and knowledge in a way as realistic as possible, that he seems to forget he's writing a novel and telling a story to his readers, instead of making a research report to a group of scholars. And though I sense this may contradict with the author's ideology of writing, to make the story dramatic, theatrical, gripping, one has to rely on exaggeration and distortion, which means to some degree, to "disrespect" reality and knowledge. A novelist may omit something that does not serve a role in the plots and burden the pace of story progress, even if it's scientific and educational, and may add something that increases the intense of conflicts and the uniqueness of characters, even if it's totally meaningless in reality. The story always comes first.
Certainly, reality also plays a significant role in this, but its function--to use a metaphor of stage show scenario--is like the costumes and accessories the actors wear to make them look closer to the characters they play, the props, paintings and murals used on the background to give the audience a feeling of immersion, and actors' vivid, lively expressions and tunes to convince the viewers their emotions are real, so real that even the viewers will deeply sympathize with them, and cry or laugh. The status of reality in novels is always an honored guest in the house that makes the party cooler, but not the host, and that's the case even in realistic novels.
So what I am suggesting is that the author either changes his direction into a completely realistic, documentary area--e.g. it will be very interesting for me to read about how author himself travels into different countries and learn about all sorts of rare knowledge of local cultures and his thoughts of it; or tries harder on the "novel" part of the novel. I would recommend the first one much more personally, because I have the impression that the author has an evident researcher personality, so the first one would be a better fit for your nature XD
