SHAN

by Eric Van Lustbader ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 6, 1986

Second far-fetched volume in Van Lustbader's China Maroc trilogy, begun with Jian. Here, by book's end, it's clear that Jake Maroc--half-American, half-Chinese, and survivor of the fall of Mao--will take over as Zhuan and lead China into her destiny in the 21st century. The enormous story is of Jake's tempering as the great leader-to-be. Shan means ""on the mountain,"" a kind of crucible experience by which the hero is refined into pure energy. The novel takes place multidimensionally, not just in China, Russia, Washington, New York, Miami, Tokyo, and so on, but also on magical levels of development in which the spirit of China is broken and remade and rebroken and again remade in a game of warfare and strategy called wei qi, and through stages describing the historical development of modern China. Bouncing back and forth from his father Zilin to Jake himself, the story literally slams from decade to decade and scene to garish scene and level to magical level with a bursting lack of reality, with every character supersensible to vibes that give him a tremendous grasp of things going on not in the immediate surroundings. Bliss, Jake's sloe-eyed mistress, is a fighting machine whose stiffened fingers can puncture a man's body. When Jake's lost daughter Lan, converted to villainy, is about to assassinate her father, Bliss tears out her own heart to place it in Lan and recover Lan to Jake. Incidents like this require a spirited head for storytelling--and vital suspension of disbelief on the reader's part. Mind-bending idiocy.

Pub Date: Jan. 6, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: FICTION