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A review by katekoda
A Heart Divided by Jin Yong
5.0
I have said so before, and I will say it again: this is like Dickens or even Tolstoy in scale and vision, but with kung fu and adventures! The saga spans wide all across China torn between Song and Jin Empires, raided by Mongols, corrupt, ravaged by war and dangerous, but so so beautiful and poetic.
I love love love every single word of it — and not just because it is wuxia, and I am forever the kung fu girl.
The story is masterful, the characters are beautifully written and they change and grow before our eyes in the familiar style of European psychological prose while remaining aligned with Chinese tradition, interesting, whimsical, loveable, funny, scary or despicable. The events unfold at a rapid pace, one dangerous encounter after another, from happy chance meeting to a tragedy and then to another happenstance. It's beautiful, well written, awesomely translated (All hail Gigi Chang! Shelly Bryant! Anna Holmwood!). (And omg the audio version? I am forever in love with Daniel York Loh, he is brilliant!)
And the only thing that's missing to make this insanely popular is a Netflix dramatisation (I am hopeful). This is a fucking treasure people, I can't stop gushing about these books. The next one is being translated even now, there are 10, I think, in total, and I am going to hoard them all and escape the world with them, because they are a perfect forget-it-all fuck-reality getaway transport into a different, wonderful and colourful world.
I love love love every single word of it — and not just because it is wuxia, and I am forever the kung fu girl.
The story is masterful, the characters are beautifully written and they change and grow before our eyes in the familiar style of European psychological prose while remaining aligned with Chinese tradition, interesting, whimsical, loveable, funny, scary or despicable. The events unfold at a rapid pace, one dangerous encounter after another, from happy chance meeting to a tragedy and then to another happenstance. It's beautiful, well written, awesomely translated (All hail Gigi Chang! Shelly Bryant! Anna Holmwood!). (And omg the audio version? I am forever in love with Daniel York Loh, he is brilliant!)
And the only thing that's missing to make this insanely popular is a Netflix dramatisation (I am hopeful). This is a fucking treasure people, I can't stop gushing about these books. The next one is being translated even now, there are 10, I think, in total, and I am going to hoard them all and escape the world with them, because they are a perfect forget-it-all fuck-reality getaway transport into a different, wonderful and colourful world.