"will you bloom bright and fierce, will you know you don't need him anymore"

[larryhammer]

Twelve things I learned from Romance of the Three Kingdoms:

1. "The young shouldn't read Water Margin, while the old shouldn't read Three Kingdoms." Fortunately, I am middle-aged.
   
   
2. Find the maps first. They are important. You will be lost without the maps. (You may still be lost with them, but at least then you have a fighting chance.)
   
   
3. It doesn't matter how familiar you are with a language -- a cast of a thousand named characters is hard to keep track of. Even restricting your attention to just those who matter at any given moment helps only so much.
   
   
4. On the other hand, having a thousand named characters makes it easier to have large numbers of entertainingly magnificent bastards.
   
   
5. Likewise, having 2100+ pages to move around in ups the number of crowning moments of awesomesauce, many by said magnificent bastards.
   
   
6. You know someone is impressive when people recognize him by the bag he wears to protect his magnificent beard. And, indeed, Guan is the only person to keep making trouble after his death for more than one brief scene. (I don't know whether he's the only one to have been deified, but he is the best-known.)
   
   
7. Marrying your designated hero to an action girl (complete with an entourage of a hundred fighting handmaidens) is entertaining only if you keep her on stage for more than two scenes. Being used to modern interpretations of Sun Quan's sister, which give her a larger role in the story, not to mention a name, I was disappointed by how poorly she was used -- as in both not made use of and badly treated.
   
   
8. You know a battle is impressive when several chapters are devoted to maneuvering for position, including instances (plural) of counter-counter-espionage.
   
   
9. Also, find the footnotes. They'll point out the ways this apparent sprawl is cunningly structured, with elaborate patterns of thematic parallels and balanced episodes that are obscured under the thousand untrackable names.
   
   
10. Despite being colorfully depicted as a Taoist wizard, Zhuge Liang is Confucian enough to privilege filial obligations to the state over brotherhood. That Liu Bei does the opposite is, to him, the tragedy of the story.
    
    
11. The death and rebirth of an empire is tragic on any scale smaller than the empire itself.
    
    
12. Too much politics, not enough Monkey King.*

As for a Ninja Replacement Score, for this work, that's about as irrelevant a measure as you can get. Which is to say, all the flaming magnificent bastards distracted me from keeping track of who would make a better the story if replaced by a ninja. Sun Quan's sister, however, does need to be replaced with later depictions of her.

* Marvelous Monkey!

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I need to finish reading it. I began, enjoyed, got sidetracked, haven't gotten back to it.

[larryhammer]

I got derailed two-thirds of the way through, when the first generation of heroes start dying -- I kicked myself back on the tracks by taking it as one of my few reading books before Sirens. I kinda wish I didn't have the couple months' break, to keep continuity fresher in my mind.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I think part of my problem was the translation (I was just looking around for the book in the mess here, and can't find it.) Maybe I have a less than steller one? As I recall, I was having trouble telling people apart, though I liked it overall, but I didn't find it compelling.

[larryhammer]

I think the telling-people-apart thing is partly due to the original: buckets of names (in unfamiliar patterns) dropped without introduction, minimal context, and characterization through action rather than description. If I hadn't had an introduction to the initial situation through a couple adaptations, I would have been lost, the first several chapters -- the time when the eventual main characters are young 'uns still working their way up to significance, but the narrative focuses more on the actions of those already with power (to set the stage).

There are two main translations, one from the 1920s, the other from the 1980s, both still in print. The former seems to be more smoothly written, the latter more accurate and with more apparatus to help the unfamiliar reader along.

---L.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ditto. And that was years ago, so I'll need to start fresh.