Hey, this is Alex, and I’m not even going to pretend to be able to act cool about this. I’ve been waiting for this for too long.
Y’all.
Y’ALL.
A Snake Lies Waiting, part 3 of Legend of the Condor Heroes comes out tomorrow. I have been itching for this book for a minute now.
This is where I’ve been for months
If you’re not aware, Condor Heroes is a semi-historical wuxia novel, written in the 1950s by Jin Yong (Real name: Louis Cha), never before officially translated and released in the US. It can be described as the Chinese equivalent to Lord of the Rings–since its release, it’s been deeply influential and popular, with a deep cultural penetration. It mainly follows the life and adventures of a young man named Guo Jing and, to a lesser degree, the love of his life Lotus Huang, in the early 1200s during the Jin-Song Wars in China (Short version: China split into north and south empires. The Song Dynasty is the original and more populated of the two nations, but their corrupt and ineffective leadership lets the Jin dynasty, which has some talented leaders, have a legitimate shot at completely taking over.) For more context, Genghis Khan is also a side character, and the seeds of the Mongolian Empire are planted in the time period of this book–Genghis Khan starts off as Temujin, an important warlord of the Mongolians but not yet THE warlord.
Finding this series has been, without a doubt, one of my favorite things in the past couple of years. I love it when a book teaches me something new as it entertains, and this has history and philosophy along with the incredible action (wuxia is a genre where sufficiently trained martial artists can perform superhuman, even essentially magical, feats of prowess and strength thanks to hard work and training. Think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and you’ll be in the neighborhood.)
Hitori No Shita "The Outcast: Season 3 Episode 2(2020)The fight choreography in this episode has some tight martial arts on display. From Tai-Chi to Bajiquan. pic.twitter.com/fxeaI6MMLG
— The Shogun Of Times Square (@TimesSqKungFu) April 27, 2020
Pretty much, the characters are fighting like this on page. A common recurring element in Condor Heroes is the pressure point hit to disable someone, which ends the fight in this clip.
For those who are aware of the series, possibly because I’ve geeked out to you in the store (Hi! Thank you for listening!), I think in the end Condor Heroes will be “Character Growth: How to Do It.” Guo Jing starts off an innocent, even naive, young man who believes strongly in the virtues of generosity, loyalty, and patriotism. As the story progresses, he remains generous, loyal, and patriotic, but he gets wiser and more nuanced about it. A Snake Lies Waiting has this recurring element where Guo finds a historical memorial of some kind, and finds out about the person it dedicates; in some cases his evaluation of the great names of the past can be quite harsh when before he might have simply revered them. His increasing tendency toward independent thought has been interesting to see, and I’m curious where he’ll end up in part 4. Lotus is also maturing; in the beginning, she’s clever (a genius, really) but spoiled and whimsical. Her father, one of the great martial arts masters, provided her an excellent education and trained her, but she thought actual practice was boring so she wasn’t as accomplished a martial artist as she could have been. Her growth has been about her learning there’s some things that need to be handled seriously, and her growth in power keeps pace with Guo Jing. I’m quite interested to see who she’ll be when this is all done.
Yes, A Snake Lies Waiting is the third of four parts, and it shows: Subplots are beginning to be resolved, and the tensions between some main characters are building toward some sort of resolution, but it doesn’t truly stand on its own as a narrative–I imagine someone who hasn’t read A Hero Bornand A Bond Undone would be quite lost at the characters who suddenly show up, not to mention it casually mentions a character backhanding a 200-pound shark out of the water. Hitting that hard is just something master martial artists can do in this series and it’s described and treated as such.
For all its quirks, though, I’m excited and pleased with this book, and now I’m waiting for A Heart Divided to come out. In several months. Dang it.
Aaand I’m right back here again.
One of the perks of this job is getting access to ARCs. I get to see stuff that may not be out for months yet and try it to see if I like it. It gives me an incentive to try things I never would have on my own, and there’s no better case of this than A Hero Born, the first part of Legend of the Condor Heroes.
I had no idea what it was when I got hold of it, but doing some research on all-knowing Google filled me in on the basics. Legend of the Condor Heroes is a Chinese novel written in 1957 by Jin Yong, the pen name of one Louis Cha. It was originally serialized in a newspaper, and it’s been called–and not inaccurately–the Chinese equivalent to Lord of the Rings; Condor Heroes has proved enduringly popular in Asia, and spawned countless adaptations in various other media, and a major influence on following works, putting a mark on an entire genre of fiction. In this case, that genre is wuxia.
Yeah, it’s not one we really have in the west. But here’s the deal: wuxia is a genre where martial artists go on journeys, learn more and improve their skills, and right wrongs along the way. The action is very frequently over-the-top, with master martial artists capable of feats of strength, control, and athleticism that are straight-up superhuman. Fight scenes can resemble Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger wire-fu, rendered in print. It’s fantasy, but instead of outright magic they usually have really good kung fu.
Now that we know what the genre even is, we can talk about this in particular. Legend of the Condor Heroes hasn’t, as near as I can tell, ever really been officially translated and published in the US until now. It’s probably always been seen as too culturally Chinese to fly over here. It’s a shame because it’s been a fun read thus far.
Yes, I’m not done reading it yet. Condor Heroes is, like Lord of the Rings, a very long work being published in chunks. A Hero Born is the first part, and we got an ARC about five months before it came out and I thought the cover looked interesting and tried it. The second part, A Bond Undone comes out today, and there’s two more parts forthcoming.
Y’all. Put it like this. This book is so good I had a complete copy of it, for free, and I still bought it when it came out. It’s been a ride and one I’m thoroughly enjoying.
Condor Heroes happens in the 1200s during the Jin-Song War, when China was split into north and south empires. As the book portrays it, the northern side, the Jin, was a more mountainous, less hospitable land than the fertile south and didn’t have nearly the population of the southern Song empire, but the Song court and government in general was corrupt and the military leadership was weak, while the Jin had some extremely sharp princes and leaders, giving both sides a parity that led into an extremely long stalemate.
I’d never really heard about this before, and it’s not only explained but it’s what sets the plot in motion and shapes the world these characters live in. In the beginning, a hotheaded martial arts master has vigilante-killed a Song official for taking Jin bribes to let the Jin do what they want in his area–in fact, the master killed the official and most of the Jin he was dealing with (see above regarding ‘hotheaded’), and he flees through the winter snows. He passes through a remote village, where he gets invited in by the hospitable locals, gets in a brief fight with one of them (hotheaded, remember?), and then makes friends with his opponent and his opponent’s best friend.
There’s lovely illustrations every chapter.
The two men are descended from famous Song patriots and they’re both married, with children on the way. The master proposes that when the children are born, in the fullness of time, he’ll come and train the children in the ways of kung fu, and even suggests names for them: Guo Jing and Yang Kang, the two main characters of the novel.
That’s right. This novel starts before the main characters are even born. For all it sounds like a slow start, it really moves rather briskly–I think it’s a result of its original publication. A serialized work has to have something interesting happen in every chunk to keep the reader’s interest from part to part. The sequence I described up there isn’t even the entirety of the first chapter.
A Hero Born features Guo Jing’s origins, his childhood and early training, and him setting out when he’s 18 to see the world and fulfill a promise made.
A Bond Undone, the second part of the novel, is Guo on his journey and finding out about the world and this is where he starts to really come together as a person: He gets more advanced training, learns more about himself, does some good, and starts to show flashes of insight and ability that people don’t expect from him
Yeah, that’s another thing. Guo Jing is canonically, officially dense and a very slow learner. He’s not stupid, precisely, but he’s not a swift thinker. I didn’t quite expect that.
The book has made me confront my own biases: I, in my ignorance, flat-out didn’t think I’d see a Chinese novel written in 1957 have a female lead character as strong as Lotus Huang–she’s as swift-thinking and intuitive and imaginative as Guo isn’t, and they make a strong pair. In fact, she’s the one responsible for a lot of Guo’s upskilling–they meet a martial arts master, a true master with some profound and powerful techniques to offer, who’s irascible and eccentric but he’s also a gourmand, and Lotus’s education, provided by her polymath father, has included a good deal of fine cuisine. She bribes him with a different exquisitely made dish every meal time in exchange for lessons for both herself and Guo Jing. This master is legit and he teaches them things that never stop being useful in a fight.
Yeah, Lotus is a good martial artist in her own right, too. She just doesn’t want to be the absolute best like some other characters, and this is presented as a valid choice.
Also in my ignorance, I did not expect to see a sympathetic portrayal of the Mongols, either, but they’re portrayed as…well, a lot. They’re fierce adversaries while also being some fearsome allies and friends. And yes, the book goes to Mongolia. It goes to lots of places.
So let’s talk writing. This book wasn’t written in English, and it shows. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just different, especially when it comes to writing about action. The book tends to baldly state what someone did and leave it to you to get excited. Further, it’ll say a martial artist performed a specific named move, like Push Back the Mountain or Wind Parts The Clouds, but it won’t tell you what that move looks like, it’ll just leave it to your imagination and whatever imagery or motion is suggested by the name.
There are also some translation conventions happening here. The translators, rightly or wrongly, seem to assume that some western readers won’t be able to cope with the straight Chinese names of most characters. Guo Jing gets off easy, but other characters are often given a title or a straight-up western-style name to replace one of their names–Sha Tongtian becomes Hector Sha, for example–and characters who share a name might have one switched. There’s already a Ke Zhen’e in the book, so a later character, Ouyang Ke, becomes Gallant Ouyang. I’m not going to judge one way or another, but it is something jarring if you’re not expecting it and it might bother some people.
As you might guess, I’m enchanted with these books. They’re great, and gave me something I never knew I wanted. There’s adventure, romance, history, action, and even illustrations! They’re also so beloved and fondly regarded that there’s a statue of the author on Peach Blossom Island, a real place that’s a major location in Condor Heroes.
The man himself.
If you’re interested in some new in action, fantasy, or history, I give these my utmost recommendation. Now I’m going to go back to reading them
