Book 649: A Hero Born (Legends of the Condor Heroes #1) – Jin Yong

I was already thinking about requesting this on NetGalley when I received an email from the publisher, so I thought “why not?”* I might’ve been sucked in by the advertisement that this was the Chinese The Lord of the Rings, but I can neither confirm nor deny that. (It totally was—we all know it.)

I wasn’t sure what to expect going in to the book, I honestly kept putting it off because I assumed it would be way too hard to read. When I started the book to find dozens of pages of prologue, character lists, and historical information I started to get worried this was going to be more tome-like (i.e. Dickens; This was also initially published serially in a Hong Kong newspaper) and less like the martial arts movies that made huge splashes in the late-90s/early-00s in the US (think “Hero”, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “House of Flying Daggers”, etc.).

And I was wrong, thankfully. This read like one of those films and actually made me rewatch “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (great until the final scene) about halfway through reading the book. A Hero Born is fast paced with some slow moments of dialogue/exposition, but overall I really enjoyed it. It had characters and locations to love and be frustrated with, and it had characters to despise and locations that were forgettable.

I can’t really rate the translation, but overall the pacing, the conversations, and the descriptions felt natural. Eery now and then there was a passage that stood out to me and at first I would think they were very nicely written, but if I re-read the passage it became more and more basic.

“He winced, and for the first time looked up at her. There, before him, was a face as delicate as a flower, two cheeks flushed pink like rose petals, and a pair of kind eyes sparkling like the stars reflected in a river.” (Chapter 1)

There’s nothing wrong with the above passage, it’s nicely written, but the more I read it, the less beautiful it became. I don’t know if it’s because it’s full of similes and not metaphors or three packed in together.

Where the author, and the translator, really excelled were describing the fight scenes (of which there are plenty). The scenes range from training montages to scenes with as many as 10-15 people fighting. I think the translator touched on this well in the appendices of how religion and martial arts tied together.

“The association between the ancient Chinese philosophies and the martial arts is all the more pronounced in fiction and film, where history and legend, fact and make-believe intertwine in a cocktail of breathtaking set pieces performed by strange and wonderful men and women in robes, fighting for righteousness and the moral code of the jianghu. This code reinforces the idea that fighting, inthe furtherance of good and noble ends, could coexist with the core Buddhist teaching of pacficism and Taoism’s “non-doing”, wu wei.” (Appendix)

The hardest part by far was differentiating the characters by name, I knew the main characters because we spend so much time with them, but those that flit in and out of the story are a little harder to remember. I wonder if Chinese (or anyone really with such different naming conventions) people have the exact same difficulties when it comes to remembering western names? Thankfully, the author had most of the characters appear as super distinct (i.e. really small in stature, carries a fan for a weapon, blind with a stick) that I was able to keep them apart mostly. And then there were the Mongolian characters whose names were differently hard to remember, mostly because I don’t think they were referred to by name as frequently.

I think the biggest critique I have of the book is the passage of time. I’m glad the author didn’t write 18 years worth of story, because that’s the time this book covers, but at the same time I felt the shift in time happened very abruptly and awkwardly. It wasn’t a chapter break or even a section break, it just sort of happens over three paragraphs with an anecdote in each explaining that time has moved forward.

Recommendation: I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. It really is like one of the late-90s/early-00s martial arts films in book form. The characters were unique enough that even though I couldn’t keep all their names organized I knew who they were. The author has clearly weaved a lot of historical people, places, and fighting styles into the book and I’m looking forward to the rest of the trilogy (series?) being released in this new English translation.

*I received a digital copy of A Hero Born from the publisher via NetGalley in return for my honest opinion. No money or goods were exchanged.

Opening Line: “”The year is 1205, for decades the Song Empire has been fighting an invasion from the North by the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria.”

Closing Line: “She helped them climb down the other side, and together they fled.” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)