"I know our antebellum innocence / was never meant to see / the light of our armistice day"

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the sort of military epic that does not spent a lot of time with blow-by-blow narration on the battlefield -- it doesn't have time for that. After all, it has to cover the better part of 100 years in only 2100 pages. Most of the time when champions meet on the field, which is a couple times for any conflict larger than a by-blow, we get just the result, be it "X raised his sword and cut Y's head off with one stroke" or "they went fifty bouts without result, until Y retreated." Makes for a bouncy and entertaining pace, if you can keep up.

So anyway, when it spends most of 10 chapters on maneuvers and espionage leading up to the Battle of Red Cliffs, you know this is a Big Deal. The battle proper is a few pages, bracketed by initial skirmishes and final retreats (treated as an extended set-piece). Once we're done with that, the narrative returns to its usual brisk fighting pace, some of which are a continuation of the pre-battle maneuvers.

Speaking of which maneuvers -- Zhuge Liang? SUCH the Mary Sue. Or as TV Tropes calls him, with remarkable cultural appropriateness, a Mary Tzu.

Anyway, with that over, I'm now into uncharted territory for me -- and the titular part of the narrative, as now all three kingdoms have been at least nucleated, if not founded as kingdoms in name. Time to start paying closer attention to the scorecard. Or at least the cast list and chronology.

ETA: Apparently there is a long history of fanboying Guan Yu.

---L.

"I know our antebellum innocence / was never meant to see / the light of our armistice day"

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the sort of military epic that does not spent a lot of time with blow-by-blow narration on the battlefield -- it doesn't have time for that. After all, it has to cover the better part of 100 years in only 2100 pages. Most of the time when champions meet on the field, which is a couple times for any conflict larger than a by-blow, we get just the result, be it "X raised his sword and cut Y's head off with one stroke" or "they went fifty bouts without result, until Y retreated." Makes for a bouncy and entertaining pace, if you can keep up.

So anyway, when it spends most of 10 chapters on maneuvers and espionage leading up to the Battle of Red Cliffs, you know this is a Big Deal. The battle proper is a few pages, bracketed by initial skirmishes and final retreats (treated as an extended set-piece). Once we're done with that, the narrative returns to its usual brisk fighting pace, some of which are a continuation of the pre-battle maneuvers.

Speaking of which maneuvers -- Zhuge Liang? SUCH the Mary Sue. Or as TV Tropes calls him, with remarkable cultural appropriateness, a Mary Tzu.

Anyway, with that over, I'm now into uncharted territory for me -- and the titular part of the narrative, as now all three kingdoms have been at least nucleated, if not founded as kingdoms in name. Time to start paying closer attention to the scorecard. Or at least the cast list and chronology.

ETA: Apparently there is a long history of fanboying Guan Yu.

---L.