Reviews - Journey to the West: The Monkey King's Amazing Adventures

511 reviews for:

Journey to the West: The Monkey King's Amazing Adventures

Timothy Richard

3.91 AVERAGE

dox057's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

wintermute314's review against another edition

4.0

This book is about the quest of a monk to go to India to bring some buddhist scriptures to China. The book is a translation of some of the chapters of "Journey to the west" by Cheng-en Wu which is much longer. The translator opted not to shorten the chapters but to omit chapters. Since the book consists of many stories or separate adventures, I wouldn't have noticed is had the translator not mentioned this in the foreword.

The monkey king is to help monk on his quest and actually he is the main subject of the book. It is very humorously written and the English translation is very literary (although I cannot vouch for the correctness of the translation since I do not read Chinese).

There is a lot of (eastern) magic in the book and the descriptions of the unruly Monkey and life in the heavens where Lao Tse, Dragon Kings, Bodhisattva's and other "gods" live are very humorous.

The book is a classic in Chinese literature and I read it while on a trip in China. Everybody in China seemed to know this book, and on temples, bridges or drum towers often sceneries from the book where depicted.

This book was fun to read and I can definitely advice it to anyone wanting to know more about Chinese culture.

smg's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous funny medium-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

greebtea's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

bowl's review against another edition

5.0

Monkey

sophie_florence's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

kcsadowsky's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous funny lighthearted medium-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

katiehicks's review against another edition

4.0

Not going to lie, I read this mostly because my love for low-budget Australian/ New Zealand fantasy action kids shows led me to The New Legends of Monkey on Netflix and I wanted to know more about the original source material. And I just love adaptations and Monkey rivals King Arthur in his pervasiveness and longevity. From what I can gather this version is pretty heavily abridged, and maybe one day I’ll try to read a fuller version, but this was a great, approachable introduction to the original. Plus the episodic nature and almost goofy humor of the story makes it very readable for something so old!