Rating: 
Summary: Beach-read entertainment (albeit an ancient beach!)
Review: Let me first state that I had no particular "reason" to read this book: no personal connection to Chinese culture, nor history, nor a love of martial arts movies. In fact, I cannot remember why I purchased it. Yet I'm sitting here having read books 1 and 2, and wondering why the third volume's release has been delayed from October 2002 to early 2003? Doesn't anybody know that I'm in suspense?This book feels like something pulled out of the past. Cross an Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie with Cervantes, set it in China, and maybe you'll get something close to this: great writing, comedy, and an irresistible antihero. You'll constantly wonder at the silliness of the story, but I bet you'll soon be waiting for volume 3, too, if you get started with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pure fun
Review: Let me first state that I had no particular "reason" to read this book: no personal connection to Chinese culture, nor history, nor a love of martial arts movies. In fact, I cannot remember why I purchased it. Yet I'm sitting here having read books 1 and 2, and wondering why the third volume's release has been delayed from October 2002 to early 2003? Doesn't anybody know that I'm in suspense? This book feels like something pulled out of the past. Cross an Errol Flynn swashbuckler movie with Cervantes, set it in China, and maybe you'll get something close to this: great writing, comedy, and an irresistible antihero. You'll constantly wonder at the silliness of the story, but I bet you'll soon be waiting for volume 3, too, if you get started with this book.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for the Book (3 Stars for the translation)
Review: Literary (unlike scientific) translations always lose a good deal in the task. It's like travellng to an alien civilization in outerspace, then coming back to describe what you saw without the help of any photographs. Imagine translating Tolkien into a language as different from English as Chinese, and you see the problem here. (How does one even attempt to translate Tolkien's Elvish verses?) One may as well read Shakespeare in Egyptian Hieroglyphs! Too many concepts have no exact counterparts, and a detailed translation would require extensive endnotes and glossaries and appendices. Still, better to have a translation than none at all for those unfortunate foreigners who don't know Chinese. For Louis Cha is the best-known and best-loved living writer of fantasy novels in the Chinese-speaking world. Those who know little Chinese history and culture will get much less out of reading Cha's novels, but that would be asking too much from foreigners interested in reading only the translations.
It's indeed interesting to compare Tolkien with Cha. Tolkien was an Oxford don - a highly respected one in fact, though his scholarship is totally eclipsed by his literary fame. Cha never held a real academic post, but his literary achievement is recognized by universities all over the world - including Oxford and Cambridge. Tolkien's one single book ("The Lord of the Rings" is not actually a trilogy, but one long book divided into three parts) has been turned into global blockbusters in the box office. Cha's many more books (he wrote more than a dozen full-length historical romances) have been turned into television series which have been shown all over Asia. Tolkien's fans tend to be hardcore fanatics - so too are Cha's. Tolkien's honors included a CBE from the Queen. Cha's honors included an OBE from the same lady and a similar one from the French President. Tolkien was relatively poor for a highly successful writer (but rich for a professor). He didn't even make real money from the movie rights. Cha is a very wealthy man, his considerable income being the huge newspaper company he founds and owns (the Ming Pao is the most respected Chinese-language newspaper in the world.) It would be tempting to argue who is more famous, Tolkien or Cha. Tolkien's fame in the English-speaking world is beyond doubt. The movies are going to spread this fame into the rest of the world. Cha's fame is also past dispute, but it's confined in the Chinese-speaking world only. Although there are more Chinese native speakers than English native speakers in the world, there are far more English learners everywhere, and English is certainly the more important language. However, non-native speakers of English are not likely to delve into difficult books such as Tolkien's, except perhaps in translation. Which is the reason why translations, despite their limitations, are always and everywhere so necessary! Ironically, although Tolkien and Cha are between them well known to BILLIONS of people, there are likely not many people who are fans of both, English and Chinese being so different from each other.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars for the Book (3 Stars for the translation)
Review: Literary (unlike scientific) translations always lose a good deal in the task. It's like travellng to an alien civilization in outerspace, then coming back to describe what you saw without the help of any photographs. Imagine translating Tolkien into a language as different from English as Chinese, and you see the problem here. (How does one even attempt to translate Tolkien's Elvish verses?) One may as well read Shakespeare in Egyptian Hieroglyphs! Too many concepts have no exact counterparts, and a detailed translation would require extensive endnotes and glossaries and appendices. Still, better to have a translation than none at all for those unfortunate foreigners who don't know Chinese. For Louis Cha is the best-known and best-loved living writer of fantasy novels in the Chinese-speaking world. Those who know little Chinese history and culture will get much less out of reading Cha's novels, but that would be asking too much from foreigners interested in reading only the translations.
It's indeed interesting to compare Tolkien with Cha. Tolkien was an Oxford don - a highly respected one in fact, though his scholarship is totally eclipsed by his literary fame. Cha never held a real academic post, but his literary achievement is recognized by universities all over the world - including Oxford and Cambridge. Tolkien's one single book ("The Lord of the Rings" is not actually a trilogy, but one long book divided into three parts) has been turned into global blockbusters in the box office. Cha's many more books (he wrote more than a dozen full-length historical romances) have been turned into television series which have been shown all over Asia. Tolkien's fans tend to be hardcore fanatics - so too are Cha's. Tolkien's honors included a CBE from the Queen. Cha's honors included an OBE from the same lady and a similar one from the French President. Tolkien was relatively poor for a highly successful writer (but rich for a professor). He didn't even make real money from the movie rights. Cha is a very wealthy man, his considerable income being the huge newspaper company he founds and owns (the Ming Pao is the most respected Chinese-language newspaper in the world.) It would be tempting to argue who is more famous, Tolkien or Cha. Tolkien's fame in the English-speaking world is beyond doubt. The movies are going to spread this fame into the rest of the world. Cha's fame is also past dispute, but it's confined in the Chinese-speaking world only. Although there are more Chinese native speakers than English native speakers in the world, there are far more English learners everywhere, and English is certainly the more important language. However, non-native speakers of English are not likely to delve into difficult books such as Tolkien's, except perhaps in translation. Which is the reason why translations, despite their limitations, are always and everywhere so necessary! Ironically, although Tolkien and Cha are between them well known to BILLIONS of people, there are likely not many people who are fans of both, English and Chinese being so different from each other.
Rating:
Summary: Also on DVD
Review: The film adaptation of "The Deer and the Cauldron" is called "Royal Tramp" 1 & 2 (part 1 is ASIN 6305052212, part 2 says it's ASIN B00000INCR, but I'm not sure that's it). The film is perhaps the best of many excellent adaptations of Louis Cha's work, and while the adaptation is not completely faithful to the book, it does an excellent job of preserving the humor and the spirit of the original. Like the film, the book is divided into relatively arbitrary sections. The end of volume 1 of "The Deer and the Cauldron" is pretty clearly just the end of a chapter chosen as an arbitrary breaking point. Plan on buying all three volumes. Despite the fact that he hasn't written any martial arts fiction in almost half a century, Louis Cha is the author behind many of the best films made in Hong Kong in the last fifteen years. Ever since I first heard of Louis Cha, I've been hoping someone would translate his works (a year of Mandarin in college just won't cut it for reading the original). The only other translation of his work I've found is "Fox Volant of Snowy Mountain" (ISBN 9622017339), which was a mediocre translation of one of Cha's weakest works. I was, therefore, happy to discover that "The Deer and the Cauldron" (at least the part I've read so far) lives up to all my hopes and expectations, and look forward to reading the third volume of the translation, and also any other translations Mr. Minford may make of Louis Cha's work in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Chinese adventure
Review: This book is a lot of fun. I am staying up reading it at night until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Like the great Looney Tunes cartoons, it can be enjoyed on an adult level and a child's level. The rollicking adventure tale is spiced with just enough Chinese history and culture. It is violent. The 12 year old hero murders a few people with a knife and tries to kill some others. Fingers get sliced off. There is plenty of kungfu talk and anyone studying martial arts will probably enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Can't stop turning pagesss
Review: THis book was amazing. Some of it was unbelievable but it was hard to put down. I was blown away by the author's imagination. Even people that don't like kung-Fu will like this. It is a Harry Potter set in China. I can't wait till they release the third book because I am really giddy. Trust me on this, this is a great book to buy and will keep you occupied!!!
Rating:
Summary: Louis Cha's Farewell
Review: This is the last of Cha's masterful storytelling efforts and it is by far his most original. The siver-tongued and foulmouthed anti-hero (Trinket Wei) will definitely fill your hours with amazement, laughter, gasps of "WHAT!" and "HOW'D HE DO THAT!?!". For me these comments and expressions were spoken out loud (and very loud somthings), which is something I almost never do. The other characters in this book are very loveable, mostly heroic, and uncommonly very vulnerable. At first glance, the men and women of River and Lake seem to exude the aura of stereotypical "heroes" (and villains) that as children listening to storytellers we have come to believe to have lived in that era. But their personalities and character faults envelope them with a third dimensional layer that definitely makes them leap of the page. Only the first two (of three) books are currently available and you'll definitely want to pickup the second before finishing the first. I think I read about 600 pages the first night. So... Tired of the "poo" that's been floating around in you're Fantasy or Adventure sections of the bookstore? This is one of the books that you'll want to snatch up! Now! Currently, I'm pulling my fingernails out with my teeth waiting for Oxford to put out the THIRD part of this book. I'm also anxiously awaiting Cha's "The Book and The Sword" which was translated by Graham Ernshaw (GREAT translation BTW). This one is mentioned in the intro of TD&TC, so I'm hoping that it comes out soon!
Rating:
Summary: Louis Cha's Farewell
Review: This is the last of Cha's masterful storytelling efforts and it is by far his most original. The siver-tongued and foulmouthed anti-hero (Trinket Wei) will definitely fill your hours with amazement, laughter, gasps of "WHAT!" and "HOW'D HE DO THAT!?!". For me these comments and expressions were spoken out loud (and very loud somthings), which is something I almost never do. The other characters in this book are very loveable, mostly heroic, and uncommonly very vulnerable. At first glance, the men and women of River and Lake seem to exude the aura of stereotypical "heroes" (and villains) that as children listening to storytellers we have come to believe to have lived in that era. But their personalities and character faults envelope them with a third dimensional layer that definitely makes them leap of the page. Only the first two (of three) books are currently available and you'll definitely want to pickup the second before finishing the first. I think I read about 600 pages the first night. So... Tired of the "poo" that's been floating around in you're Fantasy or Adventure sections of the bookstore? This is one of the books that you'll want to snatch up! Now! Currently, I'm pulling my fingernails out with my teeth waiting for Oxford to put out the THIRD part of this book. I'm also anxiously awaiting Cha's "The Book and The Sword" which was translated by Graham Ernshaw (GREAT translation BTW). This one is mentioned in the intro of TD&TC, so I'm hoping that it comes out soon!
Rating:
Summary: Foulmouthed and gruesome, but hugely entertaining
Review: Very little Chinese martial arts fiction (wuxia xiaoshuo) has been translated into English, and even the phenomenal success of *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon* does not seem to have convinced any publisher that the American public might actually want to read the original novel by Wu Du Lang. Apart from the first two books of *The Deer and the Cauldron* (and of course such classics as *The Water Margin*), I have only been able to find a translation of Li Shanji's (a.k.a. Huanzhulouzhu) *Blades From the Willows* (Wellsweep Press, 1991), which I found so dumb I could not finish it (it is actually closer to the worst Japanese monster TV series than to any martial arts movie from Hong Kong); and a French translation of a novel by Gu Long (Picquier, 1990), which was better, but not particularly memorable. Given this lack of competition, I would not be paying *The Deer and the Cauldron* much of a compliment if I said it was by far the best martial arts novel I have ever read, so I will simply state that it is the most addictive novel I have read since the early 1990s, when I discovered *The Fountainhead* and *Atlas Shrugged*. Louis Cha's (Jin Yong's) *The Deer and the Cauldron* is the story of Trinket (Wei Xiaobao), the thirteen-year-old son of a Yangzhou whore, in the Eastern province of Jiangsu, who finds himself caught up in the political intrigues of the early Manchu era, in the mid-1660's. A crafty, lazy, unprincipled opportunist, Trinket ingratiates himself with a member of the Triads, which in those days were not a mafia, but secret loyalist societies opposing Manchu rule and seeking to restore the Ming Dynasty; and becomes friends with the Emperor of China himself, another lad of thirteen. Set mostly in Beijing's Forbidden City, the novel involves a quest for copies of a sacred buddhist text, the *Sutra in Forty-Two Sections*, whose importance is only revealed in volume two; an evil Imperial eunuch seeking vengeance for murders most horrid; and power squabbles among the various Triads. The novel is written in a very lucid and unostentatious style, focusing on telling the story rather than on describing the settings. Louis Cha's main interest is in the plot of this wonderfully convoluted tale of deception and false identities: he sees his genre as a Chinese cousin of the historical fictions of Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas and Prosper Merimee. Unfortunately, the use of foul language, the frequent references to bodily functions and the numerous murders and mutilations described make the novel unsuitable for younger readers, who might otherwise have enjoyed this brilliant adventure (the most recurring term of abuse is "turtle" which, one learns in the glossary of volume 2, is a euphemism for penis; as for "tamardy", I haven't a clue.) The Second Book of this excellent series (Louis Cha's last work) was published in 1999, also by Oxford University Press, and if you hate cliffhangers, you might want to buy both volumes at once. The translator, John Minford, who also worked on the Penguin edition of *The Story of the Stone*, initially intended to publish a third volume, together with two other works of Cha's, *Book and Sword* and *Eagles and Heroes*. I sincerely hope none of these projects has been abandoned or postponed. (This volume contains a map of Ancient China, a glossary of people and places and a glossary of terms - all of them extremely helpful.)
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