Wednesday, August 11, 2021

A Heart Divided (Legends of the Condor Heroes) by Jin Yong (Translated by Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant)

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 24, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

A Heart Divided is the fourth and final part* of this new translation of Jin Yong's legendary Wuxia story, Legends of the Condor Heroes, which has been published over the past 2-3 years.  I first tried the first part, A Hero Born, during my furlough in 2020, and really enjoyed this far more than I thought I would - I'm a big character-development guy over plot and action sequences, but the kung fu and fighting sequences are so over the top and often hilarious and fun that even I was won over.  The series has some gender dynamics issues, as you might expect from fiction first published in the 1950s, but it is a lot of fun for how over the top and ridiculous it gets.   

*There are two sequel series to Legends of the Condor Heroes, which continue the story further, but this is the end of the original story, and I do not know if there are plans for a new translation of those.*

And A Heart Divided is basically more of the same in that respect, which is what I was hoping for.  The Kung-Fu scenes are a lot of fun, and our heroes - dumb but good harded Guo Jing and really bright and way too good for him Lotus Huang are very fun as their adventure continues until a point they can sort of settle down (for the moment), concluding this arc of the story.  It probably closes things off a bit too quickly, and is a bit less effective than its predecessor parts as a result (and starts to get a bit repetitive), with all the same gender dynamics issues as before.  Still, a fun conclusion to a fun series, and I wouldn't be opposed to reading the sequel.  



----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Guo Jing and Lotus Huang are on the run from Qiu Qianren and the Iron Palm Gang - with Lotus grievously wounded and on the verge of death.  But when they find refuge with a vengeful woman with self-trained but odd kung fu skills, they find themselves pointed at the fifth of the Five Greats, Duan Zhixing, the Southern King, a man known for his healing powers.  The Southern King could save Lotus Huang....but his disciples are desperate to prevent them from seeing him.  

But even if Lotus Huang is healed, the kung fu and martial forces in the world are regrouping and preparing for conflicts that will change the world...and will test Guo Jing's honor and moral fiber.  For the Mongolian army, led by Guo Jing's sorta father figure Genghis Khan, are almost finished routing the Jin Empire, and the Song Empire of Guo Jing's heart is next in his sights.  And the Kung Fu Masters long-agreed-upon conflict at Mount Hua is imminent, where the greatest master of them all will be crowned, whether that be Lotus' father Apothecary Huang, their shifu beggar Count Shifu, or the sinister and vile Viper Ouyang, who will stop at nothing to get the secrets of the Nine Yin Manual from Guo Jing and Lotus Huang.....
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In the prior volumes of this series, things would proceed along a pretty standard path:  Guo Jing and Lotus Huang would encounter a series of Kung Fu Masters on various sides, who would get into conflicts often sparked by misunderstandings, that would just go on and on to utter ridiculousness, with Guo Jing generally being overmatched at first.  He'd then wind up with training with one of these masters as his new shifu, and this training would also combine with his memorization of the Nine Yin Manual, such that when he encounters those same masters later, he would surprise them by being able to match them to some extent.  Lotus Huang would similarly get upgrades, and the two of them would occasionally meet people from their past, who would challenge Guo Jing's word and duty - his betrothed daughter of Genghis Khan (who he thinks of as a sister and would rather love Lotus Huang) and his sworn brother from birth, Yang Kang, who was raised by the evil Jin Prince and is treacherous and evil as a result.  

There's a lot less of the new training and taking of new Shifus in this book, the only new master we meet is King Duan (who now goes by another name), and even that isn't really about training as much as recontexting.  But there's still lots of wacky wuxia action, with some scenes of crazy kung fu due to misunderstandings (one big one in the early middle, then the climactic confrontations in the last chapter) as well, and the action often goes in ways that aren't just direct combat, but are instead wily displays of cunning and trickery (Lotus Huang excels at these).  These scenes are as usual a ton of fun, and are what you'd expect from this series....in fact a sequence of events between Guo Jing and Viper Ouyang, with Lotus Huang subtly affecting things in the background, is an amazing piece of writing that just cracked me up.  

Still, a lot of this stuff, especially the misunderstanding of believing that someone who wasn't Viper Ouyang was responsible for an evil act (spoiler, it is Viper Ouyang's work), starts to get a bit repetitive and annoying, and some of the new elements of this work doesn't really work.  Guo Jing finds himself as a commander in Genghis Khan's army who finds himself worried for the common people and thus winds up in opposition to the Mongolians in favor of the Song Empire, and while these sequences are enjoyable, they don't really fit the character that's developed.  They obviously are patriotic pro-China (and pro Han Chinese) aspects to this work, which don't quite work as well if you aren't invested in the propaganda, and are kind of jarring as a way to conclude the work.  And again, the gender dynamics are annoying, with yet another woman introduced as a jilted Kung Fu master wanting revenge, and Lotus Huang still being way too good for Guo Jing in the end. 

Still, overall this is a ton of fun, and I would absolutely, after a nice break from the story, read a translation of the sequel series that Jin Yong produced.  If you enjoyed the first three novels, you will enjoy this one.   

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