I can't believe this has never been translated in English before now. This first volume is an excellent story of the young life and education of a future hero in a world where practitioners of the martial arts can perform supernatural feats.

This book obviously owes a good deal to the classics of Chinese literature like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, but with more modern pacing and characterizations. At least modern for the time these stories were written, starting in the 1950s.

There are several more modern factors included in the book. The main hero has a more modern sense of morality. It has a cast of characters that while still large, is far more manageable than the huge numbers found in the classics. While it doesn't have an overabundance of strong female characters, it lacks the outright misogyny found in some earlier works.

I've seen comments to the effect that non-Chinese can't really appreciate these stories, and while I may be missing subtleties, I don't really think that's the case. It helps to be familiar with the classics, but I don't think it's necessary.

I'm really glad to have read this with my only regret being that I apparently have to wait a year for the next volume to come out.

Edit: As I edit this the top review of this book has only been up a week and has 106 likes, despite being in disagreement with 96% of the other reviews. It appears that the only reason it's a top review is because the reviewer is an "influencer" and his followers "liked" the review because they follow him, not because they agreed with the review.

What use is that to anyone else?

It's probably because I tend to review mostly non-fiction, but this is the first I've come across this phenomenon. It makes me worried about the future usefulness of Goodreads.