THE FIVE ANCESTORS #1: TIGER

Five young brothers, each master of a different kung fu style, flee the destruction of their hidden monastery in this unpolished but energetic martial-arts series opener. Here, Fu (Cantonese for “Tiger,” as the author repeatedly explains), the largest and most hot-headed of the quintet, struggles to master both his temper and a host of soldiers led by older-brother-gone-to-the-bad Ying, while several times saving and losing a precious set of scrolls that lay out the deepest secrets of kung fu. Stone is better at describing gruesomely effective fighting techniques than at dialogue—“He let me loose, and now we’re even. If he ever stands between me and the scrolls, he’ll taste my fist!”—but fans of lower-budget martial-arts films, or for that matter the character interplay that animates Lensey Namioka’s samurai adventures (which are set at roughly the same time), will find themselves on familiar ground. Readers hoping for the wild twists and epic sweep of L.G. Bass’s Sign of the Qin (2004) may be disappointed, though, and several plot threads are left a-dangling. (Fiction. 11-13)