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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-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
i have not been able to stop thinking about this book since i finished it. it has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to read it for the last four years and i regret not diving into it sooner. this was gorgeous. magical realism in the wild west. the cast of characters was phenomenal (notah may be my personal favorite). ming's characterization was great, he was such an intriguing grey hero to follow. the prose was jaw-droppingly beautiful. i was consistently annotating throughout because i was so taken aback at how poignantly this spoke of the earth, memory, trauma, connection, history. i'll have to go through and add my favorite quotes here. i loved it so much. possibly my favorite of the year so far. i don't even know what to say, this book has sort of left me speechless. i loved every minute of it. so atmospheric, so reflective. cannot rec highly enough.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
This book got a rave review from the NYT earlier this year & is a finalist for the 2022 Carnegie Medal, which is evidence of ABSOLUTELY nothing except the fact that Publishing™ loves when Asian Americans engage in representation without threat to power, that is to say, a thousand different variants on exoticism.
'The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu' is at best, if you're being generous, confused or apolitical, and if you're inclined to be a bit more realistic, thinly-veiled male fantasy that's superimposed onto a narrator who at times appears only nominally Chinese. On the male fantasy count: how convenient you are a tall imposing violent man who seems to have no character attributes other than to kill other people and fulfill some oath to your "wife", and how convenient, everywhere you go (white) women fall in love with you and want to have sex with you!
There is so much description of Ming's actions that it becomes tedious to read—great, he put three bullets in another man's head—but it exists solely because it's meant to sate this (heavily gendered) cultural predisposition to violent fantasy. Sure, that might actually be entertaining, if this was a movie or a videogame. But reading paragraphs and paragraphs describing killing people? It gets old quick.
As for the confused/horrible politics: I could go on forever. Of course the "resistance" to the constant problem we're raking over the coals, AsAm and in this case specifically Chinese American masculinity, is to write a narrator who's everything Chinese men are stereotyped not to be: tall! speaks perfect English! does NOT speak Chinese! white women love him! Like, Tom Lin, you could also probably solve your issues with masculinity by realizing that its inextricable from misogyny and this Western ideal of 'male' is not really worth aspiring to.
Of course, you could say that we're getting this flavor of masculinity because of the period-typical setting/genre (Western). Then we're still left with a 'Chinese' character who basically feels like a white character with a few racist epithets tossed at him here and there, none of which actually seem to have any deep effect on his character or plot progression because so much of this story is poorly written male fantasy and indestructible plot armor.
There is also a particular scene where Ming threatens the ringmaster and clarifies that the Chinese men in the mining community are 'not his countrymen.' It's framed in a very triumphant way, so we're clearly supposed to see it as some 'defining moment' where Ming Establishes All Chinese People Are Not The Same! That shit made me cringe SO hard. Like, are we supposed to interpret his COMPLETE lack of solidarity with these working Chinese immigrants as a positive? How does that even make sense with his character when he worked the rails himself? When will we let go of aspiring to be recognized as individuals by white people & willing to forgo any sort of intra/inter racial solidarity to get it?
Maybe, of course, I'm thinking too hard about the politics of every moment. Maybe Ming is just, you know, a man on his own grind and don't you remember that moment in the Sierras where he covers the dead Chinese boy's body with rocks? Yes, and the problem is that we don't need another narrator is completely detached from his identity. He may well be a white guy doing all those things for the same reasons, covering the body out of sympathy, just with a Chinese name.
To be fair, there are some good concepts in this novel: I think the idea of taking the Western and writing it from the perspective of a Chinese man who labored on the rails is super fascinating, and a great way to upend the genre. The idea that in a whole world of people who's fate is already ordained, what it would be like to be the one person "outside bounds", who still has free will. A lot of the magical realist elements, from the prophet to the nature of memory and land, and having multiple lives—I thought I could detect a hint of Buddhist influence, and it was fascinating.
However, these concepts are treated in the novel as just "aesthetic" influences, interesting shit for people to say and observe that seems to have no deep influence on the plot or the narrator. Instead, we get clumsy action sequences, over and over, the same frame of the outsiders trekking through the desert. The point of Chinese labor building the railroads is only addressed in fleeting moments; we spend more time on Ming fantasizing about his white wife. It's like Lin introduces interesting concepts in his novel, and then immediately abandons them. The result is something that is boring, eye-roll inducing, and only momentarily compelling.
I honestly think a lot of the godawful representation/politics/male fantasy could perhaps be forgiven if the story was just better written. But God, it's just not. It's still readable, but I have very honestly read fanfiction that has better action, better characterization, better structure, better dialogue, and better prose. The plot was structured into these little mini-chapters of action that I'm guessing were meant to feel like quests, but not all of them were entertaining or distinct so it just felt a bit random. And also the PLOT ARMOR on Ming just got too unbelievable: EVERY shot on him "goes wide", he's got this blind prophet that says really cool stuff but functionally serves no other purpose than to inform him before every fight that he's not going to die and exactly how to survive, then when the prophet dies, a MAGIC COUGAR pulls up in the Sierras to save him from death. I mean, I understand this is a man who's "cheated death", but come on, when you get to the point where you're writing cougar ex machine to keep the plot going, this is just poorly written. Imagine the following scene:
1. Bad Guys Appear
2. They Draw Guns
3. Bad Guys Shot Misses
4. Mings Doesn't
And slap a for loop on this baby and you've basically got the novel's structure.
The dialogue was often wooden and sometimes didn't have much of a reason for occurring, I literally read a dialogue scene where Lin clearly just needed to move on from it, so it ends with one character randomly going "Let's stop talking about this" and they all just go silent. Ming will go from "bristling" to "scoffing" within like 10 seconds in the same conversation. So many characters are repeatedly mentioned by name but never given much or ANY actual characterization: Gomez, Gideon Porter, the Judge, Charles Dixon, even Ada. Like I am not even engaging with the novel on a thematic or stylistic level right now, literally just from the perspective of the actual writing, it's poorly executed.
Absolutely unsurprising that all those primarily white critics circles and review outlets would love something like this. They love garbage representation, enough to forgive bad writing to get it, and pat themselves on the back for being so diverse!
'The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu' is at best, if you're being generous, confused or apolitical, and if you're inclined to be a bit more realistic, thinly-veiled male fantasy that's superimposed onto a narrator who at times appears only nominally Chinese. On the male fantasy count: how convenient you are a tall imposing violent man who seems to have no character attributes other than to kill other people and fulfill some oath to your "wife", and how convenient, everywhere you go (white) women fall in love with you and want to have sex with you!
There is so much description of Ming's actions that it becomes tedious to read—great, he put three bullets in another man's head—but it exists solely because it's meant to sate this (heavily gendered) cultural predisposition to violent fantasy. Sure, that might actually be entertaining, if this was a movie or a videogame. But reading paragraphs and paragraphs describing killing people? It gets old quick.
As for the confused/horrible politics: I could go on forever. Of course the "resistance" to the constant problem we're raking over the coals, AsAm and in this case specifically Chinese American masculinity, is to write a narrator who's everything Chinese men are stereotyped not to be: tall! speaks perfect English! does NOT speak Chinese! white women love him! Like, Tom Lin, you could also probably solve your issues with masculinity by realizing that its inextricable from misogyny and this Western ideal of 'male' is not really worth aspiring to.
Of course, you could say that we're getting this flavor of masculinity because of the period-typical setting/genre (Western). Then we're still left with a 'Chinese' character who basically feels like a white character with a few racist epithets tossed at him here and there, none of which actually seem to have any deep effect on his character or plot progression because so much of this story is poorly written male fantasy and indestructible plot armor.
There is also a particular scene where Ming threatens the ringmaster and clarifies that the Chinese men in the mining community are 'not his countrymen.' It's framed in a very triumphant way, so we're clearly supposed to see it as some 'defining moment' where Ming Establishes All Chinese People Are Not The Same! That shit made me cringe SO hard. Like, are we supposed to interpret his COMPLETE lack of solidarity with these working Chinese immigrants as a positive? How does that even make sense with his character when he worked the rails himself? When will we let go of aspiring to be recognized as individuals by white people & willing to forgo any sort of intra/inter racial solidarity to get it?
Maybe, of course, I'm thinking too hard about the politics of every moment. Maybe Ming is just, you know, a man on his own grind and don't you remember that moment in the Sierras where he covers the dead Chinese boy's body with rocks? Yes, and the problem is that we don't need another narrator is completely detached from his identity. He may well be a white guy doing all those things for the same reasons, covering the body out of sympathy, just with a Chinese name.
To be fair, there are some good concepts in this novel: I think the idea of taking the Western and writing it from the perspective of a Chinese man who labored on the rails is super fascinating, and a great way to upend the genre. The idea that in a whole world of people who's fate is already ordained, what it would be like to be the one person "outside bounds", who still has free will. A lot of the magical realist elements, from the prophet to the nature of memory and land, and having multiple lives—I thought I could detect a hint of Buddhist influence, and it was fascinating.
However, these concepts are treated in the novel as just "aesthetic" influences, interesting shit for people to say and observe that seems to have no deep influence on the plot or the narrator. Instead, we get clumsy action sequences, over and over, the same frame of the outsiders trekking through the desert. The point of Chinese labor building the railroads is only addressed in fleeting moments; we spend more time on Ming fantasizing about his white wife. It's like Lin introduces interesting concepts in his novel, and then immediately abandons them. The result is something that is boring, eye-roll inducing, and only momentarily compelling.
I honestly think a lot of the godawful representation/politics/male fantasy could perhaps be forgiven if the story was just better written. But God, it's just not. It's still readable, but I have very honestly read fanfiction that has better action, better characterization, better structure, better dialogue, and better prose. The plot was structured into these little mini-chapters of action that I'm guessing were meant to feel like quests, but not all of them were entertaining or distinct so it just felt a bit random. And also the PLOT ARMOR on Ming just got too unbelievable: EVERY shot on him "goes wide", he's got this blind prophet that says really cool stuff but functionally serves no other purpose than to inform him before every fight that he's not going to die and exactly how to survive, then when the prophet dies, a MAGIC COUGAR pulls up in the Sierras to save him from death. I mean, I understand this is a man who's "cheated death", but come on, when you get to the point where you're writing cougar ex machine to keep the plot going, this is just poorly written. Imagine the following scene:
1. Bad Guys Appear
2. They Draw Guns
3. Bad Guys Shot Misses
4. Mings Doesn't
And slap a for loop on this baby and you've basically got the novel's structure.
The dialogue was often wooden and sometimes didn't have much of a reason for occurring, I literally read a dialogue scene where Lin clearly just needed to move on from it, so it ends with one character randomly going "Let's stop talking about this" and they all just go silent. Ming will go from "bristling" to "scoffing" within like 10 seconds in the same conversation. So many characters are repeatedly mentioned by name but never given much or ANY actual characterization: Gomez, Gideon Porter, the Judge, Charles Dixon, even Ada. Like I am not even engaging with the novel on a thematic or stylistic level right now, literally just from the perspective of the actual writing, it's poorly executed.
Absolutely unsurprising that all those primarily white critics circles and review outlets would love something like this. They love garbage representation, enough to forgive bad writing to get it, and pat themselves on the back for being so diverse!
dark
medium-paced
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Cathartic revenge story. Mysterious and fun western from a Chinese American perspective.
I really liked this. Interesting characters, especially the protagonist. Like all good westerns, this one makes you root for the guy, even as he carves a swathe of death and destruction across the desert, revenge his only focus. The review copy on the cover compares this to works by Cormac McCarthy, and the comparison is apt, not only in the brutal violence, but in the way the writer creates a world that is somewhat otherworldly. Very well done.
It started well and even upon Tsu meeting fantastic beasts it’s fairly entertaining. Somewhere in the middle it starts going sideways, though. Overlong focus on characters that don’t have relevance in the main story, using beaten paths in character dynamics, dialogues, action scenes, and, again, extremely long exposure of least interesting characters kills the excitement and drags, and drags, and drags. Clichéd characters that initially one can close an eye to become unfathomable as the pacing disintegrates further on. McCarthy’s influence is all over the place, but it doesn’t hold a light to even his mediocre works. And what of Ming Tsu? I don’t see what would change if he would be another John Smith – an indistinguishable lead from the long rank of gray pokerface nuts-of-steel characters. I don’t want to talk about the ending, enough to say that it is predictable from the get go and leaves you wondering how could one put it to paper in such an underwhelming way.
There are some glimpses of hope, it has a pair of good scenes like the fight with the giant, but it’s too much to endure to read The Thousand Crimes just for these rare parts.
There are some glimpses of hope, it has a pair of good scenes like the fight with the giant, but it’s too much to endure to read The Thousand Crimes just for these rare parts.
I thought I would try a western but it turns out it's just not my thing!
Very dark drama in the old west. Half western, half Kung foo vibe, but with guns and cunning, instead of martial arts. Very interesting characters- loved the traveling freak show people, and loved the prophet. There were awesome vocabulary words tossed in for good measure - a fun read.