Sergio reviewed Three kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (Chinese classics)
Review of 'Three kingdoms' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Reading Three Kingdoms is a capital-P Project. 120 chapters chronicling close to a 100 years of Chinese history, the fall of the Han dynasty, the emergence of the Shu, Wei and Wu states and their eventual unification by the Jin dynasty. A kingdom long united must divide, long divided must unite. I read this titanic book over 10 months, 12 chapters at a time, and it proved to be a fantastic way to do so: I got enough content every month to think about, never got bored and never forgot what was going on when I hopped back in.
And I really enjoyed my time with it; like Moss Roberts, the translator of this excellent unabridged version, says in his closing essay, this book can be considered a historical text, a novel, a drama - it has it all. A cavalcade of major and minor characters, most of them memorable, …
Reading Three Kingdoms is a capital-P Project. 120 chapters chronicling close to a 100 years of Chinese history, the fall of the Han dynasty, the emergence of the Shu, Wei and Wu states and their eventual unification by the Jin dynasty. A kingdom long united must divide, long divided must unite. I read this titanic book over 10 months, 12 chapters at a time, and it proved to be a fantastic way to do so: I got enough content every month to think about, never got bored and never forgot what was going on when I hopped back in.
And I really enjoyed my time with it; like Moss Roberts, the translator of this excellent unabridged version, says in his closing essay, this book can be considered a historical text, a novel, a drama - it has it all. A cavalcade of major and minor characters, most of them memorable, outrageous and terrible at decision-making, at times guided by foolish ideals, and at others the natural inertia towards power that leadership brings. It's a book concerned about what it means to be a good ruler, or someone who serves their ruler, and how that doesn't guarantee success. And sometimes it's about a mischievous wizard that pranks said rulers with troll magic, building ridiculous shrines to change the direction of the wind, doing dream interpretation, or summoning a maze to confound an enemy's army.
And it's really well written. It may have been written in the 14th century and that may lead someone to imagine it being hard to read, or constricted by antiquated literary conventions from said times. Far from it, it deploys drama, twists, sometimes tightly paced and sometimes drawn out battles, both in the battlefield and at kingdoms' courts, superbly. Gambits upon gambits are layered on top of each other when master strategists find themselves at opposite ends of the battlefield. Poems, letters and even children songs litter the pages and color the action on the page. I laughed out loud, I... well, I mostly laughed. But it's good! It's not hard to see where its popularity comes from and why it has come to be known as one of China's 4 classic novels.
I'll admit that the first 3/4s or so are more exciting than the latter parts of the book, full of more supernatural feats, legendary heroes and history-shaking battles; history doesn't always lend itself to exciting final confrontations or epic finales, and by the time the book reaches its conclusion it's more of a fizzling out than an energetic burst, but I thought the earlier parts provided enough momentum that the novel kept me hooked to the end.
Also: Shout-outs to the Romance of the Two Networks podcast, a fantastic reading companion to the book that also happened to fit well with my 12-chapters-a-month reading schedule.
Also also: Red Hare Forever
