Status Updates From The Gathering Company: Part...

Our 'heroes' decide to murder a 4 year old boy to ensure the recruitment of Zhu Tong. There's been a change in the book. The featured heroes have gone from being typical protagonists to having grey areas to being outright villains. Recently the outlaws have been literally the kind of bandits that heroes of other stories like Seven Samurai fight against. I don't even recognise Lin Chong now.

We get reminded that a really big, multi-chapter, multi-faction conflict with much loss of lives, all started over a man stealing a chicken. I've noticed this a few times in the Four Classic Chinese novels. Notably, the Journey to the West can be traced to a chat between 2 random fishermen and one thing being overheard. If not, the Journey wouldn't have happened. It's interesting to consider this in real life too.

We get to a big battle and here more than ever, it really becomes a problem how these translators handle names. I get that Chinese names are difficult and when there are lots of them together, an English reader can be overwhelmed. But using Guv, Short-Arse, Uglymug feels wrong. Lin Chong, who was a feature character earlier, is here only named by his nickname Leopard Head. Names are the one big negative in this.

Another tale of adultery, this time involving a priest, prompting the author to do a lot of moralising about disreputable priests. Interesting how this is the only thing the author moralises about. Not stealing, murder, cannibalism, which all go without comment. And this adultery tale ends in grisly murder by our heroes. I really wonder if it's meant to be ironic that they then talk of their honour and virtue.

Song Jiang is kind of running a scam here. Also, I'm not buying the whole spiel about "we're waiting for an imperial amnesty to serve the country, but we will be plunderers until then"

All this warring…over a chicken!

Probably because I'm not enamored of the characters, I'm finding myself enjoying secondary aspects of these books. For instance, I very much like the inclusion of the Ming dynasty engravings that illustrate the story. And I like the small details of finery, food, weapons, etc.