Engaging storytelling in a vivid setting.
The fates of a pair of Chinese master martial artists and the women who love them play out in this two-part historical novel.
Inspired by the 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (based on the work of Chinese author Wang Dulu), this book offers two interconnected stories about star-crossed lovers in a 19th-century world of Chinese martial arts, intrigue, and cultural constraints. In “Chiang Shiao-ho and a Willow Tree,” young Chiang rises from humble beginnings to fame as a master martial artist. He is determined to kill his father’s murderers and his childhood foes, including the dangerous patriarch of a feared martial arts school. Chiang’s desire for revenge is complicated by his love for the patriarch’s granddaughter, who has sworn to protect her grandfather with her life. Yu’s (Chinese Mosaic, 2018, etc.) second tale, “Lee Mo-bai and a Living Widow,” takes place many years later. The orphaned son of a wealthy man (Chiang’s sworn brother), Lee is an expert in the literary and martial arts. He diverges from his reluctant path to civil service when he becomes the protector of Yu Ceo-lian, a young woman traveling to meet her betrothed for the first time. The bridegroom-to-be disappears, leaving her, as tradition dictates, to be a “living widow” for life. Although loving Lee, she takes her fate into her own hands, becoming adept at martial arts and seeking to avenge the death of her father. Lee, meanwhile, earns influential friends and powerful enemies. Despite inadvertent repetition, abrupt scene shifts, and distracting grammatical and English usage hitches (“I did not teacher you all my skills”; “He knew he will win”), these stories are rich in character and shaped by both thoughtful moral dilemmas and hyper-dynamic action. While the dual epilogues are anticlimactic, the two moving tales are skillfully propelled by acts of treachery, honor, and duty; the suspenseful appearance of legendary martial arts masters; and the author’s pointed examination of the tragic consequences of endless cycles of revenge and the cultural subordination of women.
Engaging storytelling in a vivid setting.Pub Date: March 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984516-91-6
Page Count: 366
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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