Pretty much everything I said about the first two books in the series applies to this one: Charles Dickens lite...with kung fu fighting, excellent introduction to Chinese culture and geography, insightful look at Chinese values and norms, wonderful world-building around the different martial-arts schools and fighting techniques.

However, there are two glaring deficiencies with this novel when compared to the previous two. Number one, the setting is just too limited. The first 150 pages or so is spent on a ship--and not in the Patrick O'Brian way--and another 100 pages or so is spent in the great room of an inn. Number two, coincidences and contrivances abound, making this what I feel to be the novel with the most overheard conversations in the history of all literature. It's also interesting how, with China being such a vast country and the cast of characters being so large, almost all of them manage to find their way to an inn in a little village over such a short span of time.

The bulk of this installment seems to be mostly fluff. It's filler just to drag the story out. Nothing of consequence actually happens until the last 100 pages or so. That part is interesting and does move the plot forward, but it comes too little and too late to save it. That's not the fault of the publishers, editors, or translators. That fault lies squarely with the author when it was originally serialized in the 1950s.



Here are links to my reviews of the first two books:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2195455326?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2568714103?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1