The Water Outlaws is a genderflipped queer retelling of the classic Chinese novel "The Water Margin", in which a gang of 108 bandits rise up to fight against corrupt and unjust officials plaguing the weak and impoverished in the then existing Chinese Empire. But Huang does more than just retell the story with a gender flip and queer characters: she transforms the story into a Wuxia epic featuring mystical powers, amazing martial arts (of course), and magical materials that can grant people incredible powers but are hard to control...materials that the antagonist is seeking to learn through research how to reproduce and make into more powerful weapons for the "good" of the Empire. And so we get a Wuxia tale that is not only queer, genderflipped and modern, but deals with both some of the old themes of the original work (the fight against injustice in support of the weak and powerless against the strong and corrupt) and newer ones (fighting against misogyny and homophobia, for the freedom for people to be themselves) etc.
And the Water Margin is really good. The Wuxia action is very good and, well more importantly to me, so are the major characters we predominantly follow - Martial Arms Instructor Lin Chong; Intellectual and Progressive Socialite Lu Junyi; and reckless and violent but good hearted exiled monk Lu Da; and of course antagonist Cai Jing, Channelor to the Emperor. The characters' development throughout is fantastic, and the story provides a strong examination of and use of themes as it deals with oppression, redemption, fighting for justice, fighting for the right of people to be who they want to be no matter the gender, and the use of dangerous powers...and probably more I'm omitting here. All in all an excellent novel that will enrapture you fairly quickly.
Plot Summary:
For years, Lin Chong, a celebrated and well respected martial arms instructor, has argued with her good friend Lu Junyi. Lu Junyi has always argued in favor of pushing for more freedoms and rights for women and Lin Chong has always felt that pushing too hard will only result in things getting worse, and that people like her should simply try to make the best of the status quo. But when Lin Chong fights off the sexual advances of Imperial Grand Marshal Gao Qiu, she finds herself falsely accused of treason and sentenced at first to death...and then to work in a horrible work camp, with Lin Chong's face tattooed with a mark showing her supposed dishonor to all. It's a fate Lin Chong feels grimly resigned to...until Gao Qiu tries to have her killed on her way to the camp and Lin Chong finds herself saved by the Bandits of Liangshan. Lin Chong would never have considered joining such bandits - made up of women and queer individuals who were accused (falsely or not) of heinous crimes and fight to try and get justice against corrupt officials...but slowly find herself drawn to their cause, especially against the dangerous and power hungry Chancellor Cai Jing.
But unbeknownst to Lin Chong, Cai Jing has approached and blackmailed her friend Lu Junyi into using her intellectual skills to research the powers of God's Teeth and Scholar's Stone, materials that in the right hands can amplify a soldier's power....and in the wrong hands can have explosive and unpredictable effects. Cai Jing's threats force Lu Junyi, along with a pair of imprisoned scholars, to develop an artificial version of the material, one which is even more deadly and dangerous than the original....and can cause far far more loss of life. And when Cai Jing threatens to aim that power at the Bandits of Liangshan, the fates of Lin Chong and Lu Junyi will intersect once more, and the fate of the Empire may depend upon the end result.....
The Water Outlaws tells its story from a number of perspectives - although 3-4 of them really get the main focus - as it transforms a classic Chinese tale of bandits fighting against injustice and corruption into a genderflipped and queer Wuxia epic that still manages to cover the same themes...in addition to others. If you've read Wuxia before or have seen a Wuxia film - for most Americans, that would probably mean they've seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - know that this is a very effective type of that story in how it portrays the moments of action and martial arts and what amounts to usage of spiritual or supernatural energies. Nearly every character has a nickname that reflects their role, as is not uncommon in these stories (and may in fact be borrowed from the roles of the original characters in the Water Margin), and although the story doesn't tend to have martial arts techniques and styles called out and named like Legend of the Condor Heroes and some other Wuxia works, it will make anyone just looking for some wuxia fun amongst a larger story happy whenever it dives into combat between Lin Chong, its heroine, and the foes she's presented with.
And yet, that is only kind of a small part of the story here. Instead, thanks to a number of tremendous characters, we have a well built character driven story dealing with issues of honor and justice vs corruption and injustice, the powerful vs the weak, sexism and fear and prejudice against those who don't fit in (the Queer), and more. This is shown most predominantly through our main characters who get great and sometimes surprising development here. So you have our most prominent character, Lin Chong, who had established a role for herself despite her sex and was unwilling to do more...until injustice claims her as well and she has no choice but to join the bandits and their unsavory and seemingly dishonorable ways...until she realizes they are the ones with more honor and ties her bonds to them. You have in a fascinating contrast the role of Lu Junyi, who is the more progressive between her and Lin Chong to start but who finds her intellectual smarts misused by the villain for the sake of researching a powerful weapon...and who is in fact, despite her words, too afraid at first of death and what might happen to act in the violent ways her words might eventually require. You have Lu Da, the brutish ex-monk warrior with the supernatural God's Tooth who at first is too impatient to wield it and to really be as great a fighter as she imagines (or to be as useful to the bandits as she imagines) but is good at heart and even makes sure to make up for her own misguided jealousy at one point.
I could go on and on about the characters, because really there are a LOT here, and some of them kind of blur together, especially among the bandits. But they generally work so well and they tell a story with some really great and strong themes about what is most valuable in life and how one should pursue it...and how one should act when confronted with injustice and cruelty. The Bandits of Liangshan come from all backgrounds, usually impoverished ones, and many of them are actual criminals and truly awful people, but when adapted towards a just purpose, and given license to be who they truly want to be, they can achieve more helpful goals than even the most well meaning of elites, like Lu Junyi, who is more talk than anything....and who is blinded to what really might matter in life (like her love, the lower class "companion" Jia). Outside of Liangshan the women and the queer - those who "ride the sixteen winds" - are forced to constrain themselves to specific roles and hide who they are but inside it they can be real and be free to fully enjoy their lives...and in the process they fight for the lives of others. All of this comes out even in a story that has plenty of moments of action and excitement, amidst it all.
In short, yeah the Water Outlaws is good and this review is not quite good enough to explain how much I enjoyed this book and how much it drew me in. But trust me it did, and you should definitely give it a try.
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