Tuesday, June 9, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Hero Born by Jin Yong (Translated by Anna Holmwood)


A Hero Born is the first volume in a four volume translation of Jin Yong's "Legends of the Condor Heroes."  In China, Legends of the Condor Heroes is an absolute classic of literature - originally published as a serial - and is apparently, the most famous inspiration for the modern Wuxia genre, the genre featuring Chinese martial artists fighting using elaborate moves and techniques (for a well known to America example, think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon).  An official translation into English of this classic had long been missing until 2018, when St. Martin's Press opted to bring the series over to the US, with this first volume translated by Anna Holmwood.

And A Hero Born is simply a tremendous amount of fun, even for this reader, who blog readers may remember is not a big carer about action sequences in general.  Most of the book features its many many characters bumbling into battles of outrageous kung fu, with techniques having wilder and wilder names, resolving their fights and then somehow going their own way mostly alive to fight again another day.  These sequences are so silly outrageous sometimes as to always be very amusing, even to a non-fan of action sequences, and the book somehow also manages to decent develop its important characters to have made me care about them in the end.  I will definitely be coming back for the second volume sooner rather than later.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
It is a period of unrest in China, which is ruled in name by the Song people - but the Song government and emperors have become weak and corrupt.  As a result, the treacherous Jin have taken the opportunity to seize more and more power and land, to the dismay of all of the honorable people.

Skyfury Guo and Ironheart Yang are the sons of legendary Chinese patriots, who have left their Northern lands after they were lost to the Jin.  An encounter with a Taoist monk leads to the monk promising to train their sons - sworn by their fathers to be bonded brothers - in the arts of Kung Fu,  But a Jin attack results in their pregnant wives being cast off into different parts of China, and the Taoist monk resorts to desperate measures to fulfill his promise.

Years later, one of those sons, Guo Jing, has grown up among the Mongols, under the friendship of the Great Khan Temujin (Genghis Khan).  Trained in Kung Fu by multiple masters, he is sent back into his homeland of China unknowingly to fulfill the monk's promise, but his journey will be perilous, as kung fu masters both noble and dishonorable will lie in his path, and the evil Jin remain openly in power.....
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The above plot summary is besides the point.  There are a ton of characters, many many of whom have ostentatious names (Skyfury and Ironheart are just the start), most of whom break out into kung fu fights at nearly every opportunity - often in the middle of scenes seemingly going elsewhere and sometimes with characters who have never been mentioned before previously.  You know the comic book trope about two superheroes meeting, fighting in a misunderstanding, then teaming up?  Yeah that happens more than once here.  And heck, like a comic, the bad guys are often comically evil here, with the Jin's most positive trait being their cunning, rather than anything actually moral or possibly right.  This is not a story of grey at all.

Which is fine, because it's a hell of a lot of fun.  Action sequences are filled with tons of named kung fu techniques - with names all over the place in wildness - that range from "okay that's cool" to "utterly ridiculous" in terms of my reactions, and the book somehow manages to pull off one of these after another without ever having them go stale.  A few times in which the characters are desperately trying to avoid combat results in more ridiculous martial arts stunts instead, which again are amazing.  The book's introduction of a ton of characters repeatedly is solely used to enable these fights to continue happening, and normally that would annoy me because I wouldn't care about these characters (if anyone's ever watched Bleach, you know what I'm talking about), but here it somehowo manages to work.

And heck, the book manages to somehow make many of the characters actually work so that I cared about them!  No one is super deep, but Guo Jing is highly relatable, as the boy without natural talent but a good heart being guided by many masters for purposes he doesn't even know, and who gets himself into situations by nature of his good heart.  Many of the Mongolian characters, from Temujin (Genghis Khan) to his generals to his granddaughter etc. are really nicely done and easy to root for - said granddaughter's arc made me particularly sad incidentally by how things turn out.  And of course there's the fun young woman martial artist Lotus Huang, who doesn't pop in till the final act but steals a ton of scenes as a result.  I should note that while this book does not feature a ton of female characters - I don't think it passes the bechdel test for example - it features a few in prominent roles which are far from the stereotypical roles as just being "love interests" or "damsels in distress" - three are fairly prominent martial artists, for example.

The result is a really fun novel that doesn't require deep thought - but still works really damn well.  And if you like action scenes and kung fu movies more than me, I highly recommend giving this one a try for sure.
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