Legend of the Eagle Shooting Heroes

by Jin Yong

Fan Translation available on SPCNET Forums http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/forumdisp... and converted to ebook format. When their husbands were killed by the Song army, two pregnant women found safe haven in foreign lands. Li Ping gave birth to Guo Jing, a sturdy but blockheaded young man who roamed the Mongolian prairie with the family of Temujin. Bao Xi Ruo gave birth to Yang Kang, a smart and crafty young man who became the son of Wanyan Hong Lie, a successor of the Jin empire. When a pact between their martial arts masters brought them together and the truth behind their fathers' deaths was revealed, one found martial arts enlightenment and a cause greater than his own while the other descended into darkness and destroyed everything and everyone around him.

292 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Louis Cha, GBM, OBE (born 6 February 1924), better known by his pen name Jin Yong (金庸, sometimes read and/or written as "Chin Yung"), is a modern Chinese-language novelist. Having co-founded the Hong Kong daily Ming Pao in 1959, he was the paper's first editor-in-chief.

Cha's fiction, which is of the wuxia ("martial arts and chivalry") genre, has a widespread following in Chinese-speaking areas, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the United States. His 15 works written between 1955 and 1972 earned him a reputation as one of the finest wuxia writers ever. He is currently the best-selling Chinese author alive; over 100 million copies of his works have been sold worldwide (not including unknown number of bootleg copies).

Cha's works have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay and Indonesian. He has many fans abroad as well, owing to the numerous adaptations of his works into films, television series, comics and video games.


金庸，大紫荊勳賢，OBE（英語：Louis Cha Leung-yung，1924年3月10日－2018年10月30日），本名查良鏞，浙江海寧人，祖籍江西婺源，1948年移居香港。自1950年代起，以筆名「金庸」創作多部膾炙人口的武俠小說，包括《射鵰英雄傳》、《神鵰俠侶》、《鹿鼎記》等，歷年來金庸筆下的著作屢次改編為電視劇、電影等，對華人影視文化可謂貢獻重大，亦奠定其成為華人知名作家的基礎。金庸早年於香港創辦《明報》系列報刊，他亦被稱為「香港四大才子」之一。


Source: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E9%87...

Reviews

[Darnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Series review. I really didn't like the last half of the last book, so I'm trying to judge that against all the earlier things I did enjoy. I expected this series to be about the Mongols, Jin, and Song, but it really wasn't. It was essentially the story of the Four Greats with bits of the war tacked onto the beginning and end. But the conflicts between the Greats were Jin Yong doing what he does best.

The ending was overall unsatisfying to me. The repeated breakups in Guo Jing and Huang Rong's relationship were tedious, the war was not particularly interesting, everything about the Mongols and morality felt trite, and even the rematch among the Four Greats didn't land for me.

I feel like everything this series did, Smiling Proud Wanderer did better. This makes me uncertain about reading more of Jin Yong's earlier works, though I still intend to eventually.

Misc:
- I think it's morally strange that Huang Rong three times ruins the lives of mostly innocent villagers and the text expects us to find this charming.
- It's odd to me that it expects us to keep track of a dozen unimportant martial artists but re-explains Ouyeng Ke's real father every time.
- This one has explicitly "millions" of sharks. You can apparently herd snakes by the tens of thousands as well.
- "In embarrassment, he vomited a mouthful of blood."
- Dramatic suicides to make a point or deescalate/escalate a situation: 6
- 8 if you count failed attempts

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be Chinese, you must know Jin Yong. Unfortunately, I do not know Chinese. Luckily, there are highly readable English versions on the net. Jin Yong's stories are so much more than just popular literature and worth every serious reader's time. There really is no Western equivalent.

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am quite a fan of Chinese martial arts movies, because they are either epic (Zhang Yimou's movies) or completely crazy (Kung Fu Hustle). This book of wuxia stories supposedly forms part of that universe, but it failed to interest me. It felt like reading bland descriptions of this type of movies, which doesn't work. Long conversations about local rulers, alternated with randomly caused fight scenes and discussions about whose kung fu is better. Not my thing.

[Cashi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine two enemies baying for one another's blood... So instead of fighting, they compete in spitting watermelon seeds into glasses of wine to prove who has better Kung Fu... This book is filled with dramatic de-escalations like this. It's basically a script for a mediocre Kung Fu movie.