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

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.

So much for the remote possibility that everyone the heroes killed were evil. In this chapter, Song Jiang, leader of the heroes, "had Gao Lian's family, young and old, good and bad, thirty or forty people in all, executed in the market-place."

Ah, chapter 51, in which one of the heroes cracks open a woman's skull: "The brains spilled out, the eyeballs burst," and another of the heroes orders the death of a small boy who is only about 4 years old.