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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fantastic book and classic. The story has great flow, character moments and developments as well as big plot instances. The character writing is most likely the single most lovable thing of this title and we can see this based on the sheer influence on culture and pop culture this book has had on the world.
this was my everything during childhood. from the children’s version to adaptations to the original, unabridged whole, i read this at least 50 times. never obsessed over a book more.
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
მე ამას ვერ გავქაჩავ, გამორიცხულია. უბრალოდ ფაქტების მიმდევრობით ჩამოწერას ჰგავს, საყიდლების სიაა და არა პროზა. აზიური საყიდლების სია ოღონდ, საოცრად რთულად დასამახსოვრებელი სახელებით. უამრავი ახალი სახელები ჩნდებიან ლამის ყოველ გვერდზე იმისთვის, რომ მომდევნოზე სრულიად გაქრნენ. ჩინელები ძალიან აქებენ, რა თქმა უნდა, და გასაგებია რატომაც. 10% - ს ვერ გავცდი.
Where do I begin? Maybe that this 600 page book is only the abridged version of the original 2,300 page story. A welcome break from Western literature, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms depicts the fall of China’s Han Dynasty, chieftain power grabs, epic deception, tactical brilliance, and mercy. It’s a difficult read, but the style matches the story—absolute chaos and disorder. I want more.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think people are missing the fact that this book was written like, forever ago. Anyway it’s great — read it
I've had this book for a couple of years. I kept meaning to read it, but it never got far enough up my TBR stack.
Until I saw Red Cliff. Admittedly, the shortened international version.
Man, that movie is great. Go see it. Now!
(Strange how my top three movies are all international and not US made).
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a Chinese medieval saga or like a Viking saga, at least if I had to compare it to works in the West. The style is very similar to all those Arthurian stories as well as the Viking sagas; however, it does appear to be more rooted in fact.
The story chronicles the fall of the Han Dynasty, and there is fight or a battle in almost every chapter. It is about honor, loyalty, and brotherhood. In short, it is like the Knights of the Round Table, without the Round Table, and the over compassing romantic triangle.
For me, the best part of the book was the section that started around Chapter 38. This is because in the movie version, I loved the character K'ung-ming (aka the Sleeping Dragon aka Chuko Liang). The actor who played him in the movie is not only good looking but made walking around with a hawk wing fan extremely sexy. K'ung-ming is a very smart man, who might be called a wizard. Regardless, the way he borrows arrows is extremely cunning and funny.
The one thing that I did find somewhat disappointing was the role of women in the book. In the movie, there are only two central female characters, yet they play important parts. There are more female characters in the book, but overall the women play minor parts. In fact, one of the women had her role greatly expanded in the film. In the book, she is non-existent. There is also a line that compares the loss of a wife to the loss of clothes. Something that can be easily replaced (yet, the man are supposed to honor their mothers).
Yeah, I know different culture and time. Yeah, yeah.
Yet, women in the book are not entirely lacking. There is Little Cicada who bravely aids the family who helped her, and her story is wonderfully told. There is the Lady Sung. Sung was given a somewhat expanded role in the film. In the book, while she is an Amazon, she is somewhat less of an Amazon; however, she aptly defends her husband.
Like most sagas, the characters are more bound by honor and type than actual living breathing people. It is a romance after all. So if you are excepting character development, there is not so much. Plenty of daring do, battles, slaughter, men swearing brotherhood, and humor. But character development, nope. But this is true of all medieval sagas.
The only problem I had with reading the book was names. I am sure this is because I am a Westerner. Each character seemed to four to six different names that would be used interchangeably. I would have liked to have had a character list or something in the book to help keep all the names straight. As it was, I had to make my own.
I'm updating this review because I saw the five hour Red Cliff (ie. Parts 1 and 2). Let me just say, Mr. Woo please next time you do this, release both versions in the U.S. It was so much better than what I saw in the theater. It ROCKED! And all that plot with the princess.
Until I saw Red Cliff. Admittedly, the shortened international version.
Man, that movie is great. Go see it. Now!
(Strange how my top three movies are all international and not US made).
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a Chinese medieval saga or like a Viking saga, at least if I had to compare it to works in the West. The style is very similar to all those Arthurian stories as well as the Viking sagas; however, it does appear to be more rooted in fact.
The story chronicles the fall of the Han Dynasty, and there is fight or a battle in almost every chapter. It is about honor, loyalty, and brotherhood. In short, it is like the Knights of the Round Table, without the Round Table, and the over compassing romantic triangle.
For me, the best part of the book was the section that started around Chapter 38. This is because in the movie version, I loved the character K'ung-ming (aka the Sleeping Dragon aka Chuko Liang). The actor who played him in the movie is not only good looking but made walking around with a hawk wing fan extremely sexy. K'ung-ming is a very smart man, who might be called a wizard. Regardless, the way he borrows arrows is extremely cunning and funny.
The one thing that I did find somewhat disappointing was the role of women in the book. In the movie, there are only two central female characters, yet they play important parts. There are more female characters in the book, but overall the women play minor parts. In fact, one of the women had her role greatly expanded in the film. In the book, she is non-existent. There is also a line that compares the loss of a wife to the loss of clothes. Something that can be easily replaced (yet, the man are supposed to honor their mothers).
Yeah, I know different culture and time. Yeah, yeah.
Yet, women in the book are not entirely lacking. There is Little Cicada who bravely aids the family who helped her, and her story is wonderfully told. There is the Lady Sung. Sung was given a somewhat expanded role in the film. In the book, while she is an Amazon, she is somewhat less of an Amazon; however, she aptly defends her husband.
Like most sagas, the characters are more bound by honor and type than actual living breathing people. It is a romance after all. So if you are excepting character development, there is not so much. Plenty of daring do, battles, slaughter, men swearing brotherhood, and humor. But character development, nope. But this is true of all medieval sagas.
The only problem I had with reading the book was names. I am sure this is because I am a Westerner. Each character seemed to four to six different names that would be used interchangeably. I would have liked to have had a character list or something in the book to help keep all the names straight. As it was, I had to make my own.
I'm updating this review because I saw the five hour Red Cliff (ie. Parts 1 and 2). Let me just say, Mr. Woo please next time you do this, release both versions in the U.S. It was so much better than what I saw in the theater. It ROCKED! And all that plot with the princess.
The more academic will focus on the plot. And the plot is long, convoluted and convulsive. And it doesn't have a neat ending.
But the plot is a historical pathway down which a series of heroic, evil, vicious, clever, wise, intriguing, stupid, loyal characters walk and walk off.
Understand this and there is a light into the vault of Chinese cultural values. It is not what we imagine looking from outside.
One man towers over all others. Zhuge Liang
Amazing book. Thank you to my friend Eugene who bought it for me
But the plot is a historical pathway down which a series of heroic, evil, vicious, clever, wise, intriguing, stupid, loyal characters walk and walk off.
Understand this and there is a light into the vault of Chinese cultural values. It is not what we imagine looking from outside.
One man towers over all others. Zhuge Liang
Amazing book. Thank you to my friend Eugene who bought it for me
Where do I start? This is an enormous novel and many things about it seem to be twice as much as War and Peace: twice the length (2340 pages in this edition) and twice as many characters (1000 against 500 for Tolstoy’s master work). Three Kingdoms covers a key period in Chinese history from 168 to 280CE when the Han Dynasty collapsed (in 221CE) and was replaced by three kingdoms – Wei, Wu and Shu – who competed for mastery for sixty years before a new Jin Dynasty was founded. That’s where the novel ends, though the excellent translator, Moss Roberts, reminds us that that unity lasted barely a generation before the empire fractured again in 306CE. Western history buffs will know that this was a critical period for the Roman Empire as well, with decades of rebellions and invasions in the third century culminating in the temporary unification of the empire by Diocletian in 284CE. A timeline of events in China and Europe during this time would be interesting.
But this is an historical novel, not a history textbook. This edition is published by Chinese Classics in a four volume box set. It looks cheap and it has a lot of typos but on the plus side each volume is easy to carry in your pocket, unlike some other huge editions. You also get the full unabridged translation of one of the most widely accepted and studied versions of the novel. There’s a hint there. Nothing is straightforward with Three Kingdoms. With this edition, however, you get a lost of extras to help guide you through the labyrinth. These include a long “Afterword” at the end of Volume IV. This reads like the kind of scholarly introduction you would expect to get at the start of a Penguin Classics edition – though annoyingly Penguin Classics don’t do an unabridged version of the novel. The Afterword is a detailed but readable canter through the historical sources of the novel and the history of the novel itself, with several variants appearing at different times for different political reasons.
Here is a summary from memory. It’s generally accepted that Luo Guanzhong wrote the novel some time in the fifteenth century or possibly the fourteenth. He used various sources, including historical works, poetry and drama. The fall of the Han Dynasty 1200 years earlier had topical relevance in his lifetime because of the fall of the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty in 1368 and its replacement by the Ming Dynasty…or if Luo was writing in the fifteenth century, the topical relevance was later Mongol attempts to topple the Ming. Or maybe the novel was written in the sixteenth century when something else was happening. Anyway, we have two main variants, one published in 1522 and one published in the seventeenth century that was edited and heavily annotated by one Mao Zonggang. When Mao was around, the Ming Dynasty collapsed and was replaced by the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (1644). Was Mao pro-Ming or pro-Qing? Who knows, but his edition is very different from the 1522 version (and about 1/6 shorter). This edition has lots of footnotes that refer to Mao’s own notes. You can ignore these without losing any reading pleasure but they do give a lot of useful background information (e.g. where the novel strays from fact into pure fiction) and Mao’s inciteful observations about the literary merits of the novel.
One thing to be aware of is that this is a very masculine novel. There are few female characters, though the women who do appear tend to be at the top of the heap: empresses and imperial concubines. Some warriors even. Some of them are extremely courageous and virtuous, which means they commit suicide rather than face disgrace and dishonour. Occasionally they might influence a decision, but the overwhelming feeling is that is a patriarchal world where elite men call the shots. It reminds me that China doesn’t seem to have any history of democracy. This is a feudal world where everyone owes allegiance to someone above them in the hierarchy, except the emperor, who is the son of heaven. There are characters of all kinds: heroes, cowards, virtuous men like Xuande and incredibly clever and cunning villains like Cao Cao. Most are soldiers and imperial officials, but some of the most interesting are wise men – often Taoist priests – who get by on their wits rather than their lineage. The descriptions of campaigns and battles make you realise that China must have been an incredibly wealthy and well-organised state (or collection of states) almost 2000 years ago. There’s no other way that armies of hundreds of thousands could have been sustained in the field for years at a time. That’s why the various military strategists in the novel make a big deal about grain depots and arms dumps and lines of march. It all sounds very modern. And the translation – which was done in the 1980s – reads very easily. Apparently, it is a close translation of Mao’s text but there’s nothing pompous or stilted about it. It could have been written yesterday.
Some rulers regard competence and virtue as more important than being posh so they appoint a wise man of humble birth to high office, but on the whole status and birth trump everything else. One of the great exceptions is Kongming, a man from nowhere who rises to become prime minister of the Riverlands kingdom. He has a wealth of talent bordering on wizardry but is essentially honest and virtuous. There is one extraordinary episode in Volume III where he creates some kind of maze in the landscape that traps an invading army. It is a superb piece of writing. It’s in Chapter 84: “Kongming deploys the Eightfold Ramparts Maze”. If that’s the only chapter you ever read, you’ll come away amazed.
If you read the whole novel though, you begin to realise that this is not simply a catalogue of battles, betrayals and flying heads (counting the number of decapitations would be a challenge for any mathematician). It is in fact a masterpiece that has had massive influence, not only in China but in surrounding countries. How helpful it could be in enabling us to predict where China is going in the twenty-first century remains to be seen. I came away from it feeling that I had learned a lot about Chinese history and in the process, I met some unforgettable characters and events. If the present Chinese leaders are learning any lessons from Three Kingdoms, the West needs to read it too.
But this is an historical novel, not a history textbook. This edition is published by Chinese Classics in a four volume box set. It looks cheap and it has a lot of typos but on the plus side each volume is easy to carry in your pocket, unlike some other huge editions. You also get the full unabridged translation of one of the most widely accepted and studied versions of the novel. There’s a hint there. Nothing is straightforward with Three Kingdoms. With this edition, however, you get a lost of extras to help guide you through the labyrinth. These include a long “Afterword” at the end of Volume IV. This reads like the kind of scholarly introduction you would expect to get at the start of a Penguin Classics edition – though annoyingly Penguin Classics don’t do an unabridged version of the novel. The Afterword is a detailed but readable canter through the historical sources of the novel and the history of the novel itself, with several variants appearing at different times for different political reasons.
Here is a summary from memory. It’s generally accepted that Luo Guanzhong wrote the novel some time in the fifteenth century or possibly the fourteenth. He used various sources, including historical works, poetry and drama. The fall of the Han Dynasty 1200 years earlier had topical relevance in his lifetime because of the fall of the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty in 1368 and its replacement by the Ming Dynasty…or if Luo was writing in the fifteenth century, the topical relevance was later Mongol attempts to topple the Ming. Or maybe the novel was written in the sixteenth century when something else was happening. Anyway, we have two main variants, one published in 1522 and one published in the seventeenth century that was edited and heavily annotated by one Mao Zonggang. When Mao was around, the Ming Dynasty collapsed and was replaced by the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (1644). Was Mao pro-Ming or pro-Qing? Who knows, but his edition is very different from the 1522 version (and about 1/6 shorter). This edition has lots of footnotes that refer to Mao’s own notes. You can ignore these without losing any reading pleasure but they do give a lot of useful background information (e.g. where the novel strays from fact into pure fiction) and Mao’s inciteful observations about the literary merits of the novel.
One thing to be aware of is that this is a very masculine novel. There are few female characters, though the women who do appear tend to be at the top of the heap: empresses and imperial concubines. Some warriors even. Some of them are extremely courageous and virtuous, which means they commit suicide rather than face disgrace and dishonour. Occasionally they might influence a decision, but the overwhelming feeling is that is a patriarchal world where elite men call the shots. It reminds me that China doesn’t seem to have any history of democracy. This is a feudal world where everyone owes allegiance to someone above them in the hierarchy, except the emperor, who is the son of heaven. There are characters of all kinds: heroes, cowards, virtuous men like Xuande and incredibly clever and cunning villains like Cao Cao. Most are soldiers and imperial officials, but some of the most interesting are wise men – often Taoist priests – who get by on their wits rather than their lineage. The descriptions of campaigns and battles make you realise that China must have been an incredibly wealthy and well-organised state (or collection of states) almost 2000 years ago. There’s no other way that armies of hundreds of thousands could have been sustained in the field for years at a time. That’s why the various military strategists in the novel make a big deal about grain depots and arms dumps and lines of march. It all sounds very modern. And the translation – which was done in the 1980s – reads very easily. Apparently, it is a close translation of Mao’s text but there’s nothing pompous or stilted about it. It could have been written yesterday.
Some rulers regard competence and virtue as more important than being posh so they appoint a wise man of humble birth to high office, but on the whole status and birth trump everything else. One of the great exceptions is Kongming, a man from nowhere who rises to become prime minister of the Riverlands kingdom. He has a wealth of talent bordering on wizardry but is essentially honest and virtuous. There is one extraordinary episode in Volume III where he creates some kind of maze in the landscape that traps an invading army. It is a superb piece of writing. It’s in Chapter 84: “Kongming deploys the Eightfold Ramparts Maze”. If that’s the only chapter you ever read, you’ll come away amazed.
If you read the whole novel though, you begin to realise that this is not simply a catalogue of battles, betrayals and flying heads (counting the number of decapitations would be a challenge for any mathematician). It is in fact a masterpiece that has had massive influence, not only in China but in surrounding countries. How helpful it could be in enabling us to predict where China is going in the twenty-first century remains to be seen. I came away from it feeling that I had learned a lot about Chinese history and in the process, I met some unforgettable characters and events. If the present Chinese leaders are learning any lessons from Three Kingdoms, the West needs to read it too.