User Profile

I am very much a beginner when it comes to wuxia literature, and in particular to the work of its extraordinary master in Jin Yong/Louis Cha.

Over the past few years the first books of the great wuxia epic described as stories of the Condor Heroes have seen new official translations. The Legends of the Condor Heroes has been published as a quartet, and now this is the first book in a new series, Return of the Condor Heroes.

We're in a new generation, and off to an inauspicious start as the son of Yang Kang, a boy called Penance, has a difficult and messy induction into the martial world of the wulin and the jianghu. I won't say much about the plot - it meanders in the way that you might expect from what was serialised fiction in its initial publication - but the ways in which everything that matters is wound through with magical kung fu, superhuman feats of martial prowesse, and the still-unfolding historical river of loyalties, grievances, and challenges, is impressive.

It's a very easy read, jam packed with mystical kung fu. Looks like we're going to be waiting a good while for the official translation of the next volume, so might have to get stuck into some of the fan translations that are out there to follow up on the cliff-hanger ending!

I was given this as a gift, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a delightful graphical text, winding together of threads from across a number of different fields of philosophy.

As a demonstration of the medium, it's a compelling existence case for effective philosophical communication in sequential art. The monochrome imagery really helps capture complexity and nuance. Making ideas accessible, while there is a certain exploratory, introductory character to them, it would be very wrong to call the effect superficial. The artwork, rather, draws the reader in, invites further consideration and contemplation.

The themes are some that are of particular interest to me, on the dynamism and radically incomplete character of being, identity, and knowledge. I work in the area, and would consider this a rich and worthy way of getting into these issues. I think this would make an excellent text to work with with students, for instance - certainly at undergraduate level, and perhaps at secondary school too.

Highly recommended.

With perhaps a little more understanding of how things will go, I found this book perhaps a bit better than the first volume (bookwyrm.social/book/402337/review#reviews).

What I didn't fully understand about the first book, and which took me a surprisingly long time to realise reading this one, is that the lack of awareness or knowledge of the "big picture" in this epic tale is the whole point. The point of view characters each has their arc, all of them dealing with difficulties and unpleasantness that is much greater than they can ken or manage. The result is that the grand sweep of history is unfolding, but there's no way for the characters or reader to fully grasp it.

Both because we've got to know them better, and because of development, the characters themselves are more appealing. They are rounded, often messy, and so the more compelling for it, though flaws certainly shine through.

The book also has flaws typical of the genre - it doesn't pass the low bar of the Bechtal Test, for instance, and the treatment of women is also noted in other reviews on here and worth looking at. The world building remains generally decent, though the mythology feels strangely restricted - with a couple of continents and several countries, everything religious or mythological seems to come down to the same few men. Still, there are some nice twists and serious messing with the tropes too.

(em português: sol2070.in/2024/05/livro-the-eye-of-the-heron-ursula-le-guin/ )

Ursula K. Le Guin often writes some of the best science fiction books on specific themes: “The Dispossessed”, about anarchism; “The Left Hand of Darkness”, about gender fluidity; and “The Eye of The Heron” (1978), about non-violence.

In the latter, two groups are exiled from Earth as a kind of scum: people convicted of crimes and pacifist activists who refused to participate in society in nations at war. The convicts arrived a few generations earlier. They had been expelled from a self-destructing Earth with no more prison capacity, on a one-way trip to the prison planet. So they recreate an authoritarian and hierarchical society.

The activists, on the other hand, were adherents of non-violent direct action and gave rise to an essentially anarchist community. I'm not going to comment any further because the revelation about their history and how their exile came about are among the greatest moments.

The plot revolves around the social tension between the groups, the clash between brutality and non-violence as the basic ethical principle of a culture.

It will especially delight those who loved The Dispossessed.

Not without its flaws, but this, like its predecessor, stands up to time (no pun intended).

Representation of women is good for the late 80's, not great for today. Ethnicity is reasonably diverse, though you'd have to suspect the leads were all intended as white it would be quite possible to cast most of them them however you'd like to. Certainly Simmons very clearly believes an advanced human civilisation is varied across the scale, and will only get more and more varied as time goes on (this is explicitly represented in very positive terms).

The book remains an impressive combination of character drama and epic scale science fiction war. Space opera in the fantastical sense, and very explicitly and deliberately romantic (in the literary rather than relationship sense). Things certain go a bit wild, and possibly a little too magical if your tastes run to the harder stuff in speculative fiction.

The conflicts seeded in the first book blossom and expand here. All of the mysterious threats that haunt Hyperion (both the first novel and the fictional world) are given articulation and texture, though not in any hurried way. It culminates in what for me is a satisfying though not comfortable conclusion.

Has always been one of my favourites and has not disappointed on this re-read. One of the best examples of its type.