Patrick’s Reviews > The Gathering Company: Part Three of The Marshes of Mount Liang > Status Update

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.