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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
adventurous
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This story had an irreverent energy to it. It’s fantastical, the situations are sometimes ridiculous in the best way. I feel like satire or this type of humor would be difficult to come across tone wise in the written word but this translation really nailed it. I would recommend this story to people.
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a review of the translation by Julia Lovell titled Monkey King.
So this is the third of the Four Great Chinese Classical Novels I've read, and it might be the most like what we tend to think of these days as a 'novel'. Three Kingdoms and Water Margin both feel more like epics, following the landscape of whole regions at a time as dozens of characters interact within them; here, we're sticking with a smaller group on a clear mission. After a bit of a prologue in which we get some Monkey (as he's called in this version) origin story and learn about some of his abilities, as well as some of the spiritual context through meeting some deities and whatnot, we pretty much spend the novel's length hanging out with Buddhist pilgrim Tripitaka as he embarks on a fifteen-plus-year, 108,000 mile journey to obtain some sacred scrolls from India. He picks up a few 'disciples' en route: the aforementioned Monkey as well as reformed demons Pigsy and Sandy, and the four form our main cast. (Oh, and there's also a dragon who eats Tripitaka's horse and ends up transforming into a horse himself to make up for it.)
This is the first version/translation I've read of Journey to the West, and as far as I can tell it does a pretty good job. You can kind of tell it's pretty heavily abridged, and I get why - the end result is something that feels like a much sleeker story than a lot of classics - but I feel like I missed a few of the most fun-sounding episodes so I might have to find a longer version at some point! Still, no point judging this version on what it isn't or doesn't have: what it does have, as it turns out, is a lot of fun. It's sometimes genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, which is pretty impressive. There are definitely some oddities to a modern reader, but that's kind of par for the course with a book this old: values have changed, so things that were marks of heroism to the culture in which this book was written now seem strange or outright immoral.
The plot basically boils down to Tripitaka and co. gradually wandering westward and coming up against a bunch of trials on the way; in many ways the bulk of the journey feels less like one long story and more like a sitcom in which the pilgrims face a different threat each episode, with a few connecting threads but the various adventures mostly remaining discrete. Things are generally resolved in one of a couple of ways: Monkey beats up the monster with his size-shifting staff; Monkey uses transformation magic to trick the monster, gets caught, and ultimately beats it up with his size-shifting staff; or Monkey fails to beat up the monster with his size-shifting staff and runs off to get help from a deity.
This last solution happens a lot, actually; you know how Greek plays and stories often feature gods intervening to solve things, and that's where the phrase 'deus ex machina' comes from? Well, deus ex Monkey is probably the most reliable way for the pilgrims to solve things: since Heaven's on their side, a few deities are pretty willing to help them out, and Monkey's annoying enough that he can usually persuade any who weren't immediately up for it. (Also, he often travels thousands of miles to find said deity, but luckily this isn't a problem as he can jump that in less than a second. This ability comes in less handy than you might think on the pilgrimage, since he can't carry Tripitaka, but there are a lot of occasions on which the pilgrims would've been truly in trouble could Monkey not just teleport halfway around the world, or up into Heaven, to get help.)
There's a common theme around Heaven being just the most bureaucratic place you can imagine, which is often a source of real humour: demons and kings file celestial lawsuits, and on at least one occasion a minor cock-up and a bit of administrative finagling results in two people just straight-up coming back to life, one in someone else's body entirely.
Lovell's made something here that's really easy to get through; it's still got a lot of the idiosyncrasies of ancient Chinese literature, of course, because that's what it is, but I feel like what the style of this translation has achieved is a tone that feels kinda similar to how stories like this might've been initially spun by enthusiastic storytellers to enraptured listeners. It's just fun and enjoyable, requiring very little effort and no prior knowledge whatsoever to have a good time with.
So this is the third of the Four Great Chinese Classical Novels I've read, and it might be the most like what we tend to think of these days as a 'novel'. Three Kingdoms and Water Margin both feel more like epics, following the landscape of whole regions at a time as dozens of characters interact within them; here, we're sticking with a smaller group on a clear mission. After a bit of a prologue in which we get some Monkey (as he's called in this version) origin story and learn about some of his abilities, as well as some of the spiritual context through meeting some deities and whatnot, we pretty much spend the novel's length hanging out with Buddhist pilgrim Tripitaka as he embarks on a fifteen-plus-year, 108,000 mile journey to obtain some sacred scrolls from India. He picks up a few 'disciples' en route: the aforementioned Monkey as well as reformed demons Pigsy and Sandy, and the four form our main cast. (Oh, and there's also a dragon who eats Tripitaka's horse and ends up transforming into a horse himself to make up for it.)
This is the first version/translation I've read of Journey to the West, and as far as I can tell it does a pretty good job. You can kind of tell it's pretty heavily abridged, and I get why - the end result is something that feels like a much sleeker story than a lot of classics - but I feel like I missed a few of the most fun-sounding episodes so I might have to find a longer version at some point! Still, no point judging this version on what it isn't or doesn't have: what it does have, as it turns out, is a lot of fun. It's sometimes genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, which is pretty impressive. There are definitely some oddities to a modern reader, but that's kind of par for the course with a book this old: values have changed, so things that were marks of heroism to the culture in which this book was written now seem strange or outright immoral.
The plot basically boils down to Tripitaka and co. gradually wandering westward and coming up against a bunch of trials on the way; in many ways the bulk of the journey feels less like one long story and more like a sitcom in which the pilgrims face a different threat each episode, with a few connecting threads but the various adventures mostly remaining discrete. Things are generally resolved in one of a couple of ways: Monkey beats up the monster with his size-shifting staff; Monkey uses transformation magic to trick the monster, gets caught, and ultimately beats it up with his size-shifting staff; or Monkey fails to beat up the monster with his size-shifting staff and runs off to get help from a deity.
This last solution happens a lot, actually; you know how Greek plays and stories often feature gods intervening to solve things, and that's where the phrase 'deus ex machina' comes from? Well, deus ex Monkey is probably the most reliable way for the pilgrims to solve things: since Heaven's on their side, a few deities are pretty willing to help them out, and Monkey's annoying enough that he can usually persuade any who weren't immediately up for it. (Also, he often travels thousands of miles to find said deity, but luckily this isn't a problem as he can jump that in less than a second. This ability comes in less handy than you might think on the pilgrimage, since he can't carry Tripitaka, but there are a lot of occasions on which the pilgrims would've been truly in trouble could Monkey not just teleport halfway around the world, or up into Heaven, to get help.)
There's a common theme around Heaven being just the most bureaucratic place you can imagine, which is often a source of real humour: demons and kings file celestial lawsuits, and on at least one occasion a minor cock-up and a bit of administrative finagling results in two people just straight-up coming back to life, one in someone else's body entirely.
Lovell's made something here that's really easy to get through; it's still got a lot of the idiosyncrasies of ancient Chinese literature, of course, because that's what it is, but I feel like what the style of this translation has achieved is a tone that feels kinda similar to how stories like this might've been initially spun by enthusiastic storytellers to enraptured listeners. It's just fun and enjoyable, requiring very little effort and no prior knowledge whatsoever to have a good time with.