Three Kingdoms Volume 1 by Luo Guanzhong translated by Moss Roberts: Book Review

I've now finished Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 and I'm starting in on Volume 2. In this edition, the Chinese Classics edition published by Foreign Language Press in Beijing, there are four volumes. So one down, three to go. But just like I did when I was reviewing Journey to the West, another Chinese classic that was divided into four volumes by the Foreign Language Press. I'm going to give my thoughts on each volume as I go and hopefully I'll have enough things to say on each volume to make these little videos worthwhile. But whether I have something worthwhile or not to say about it, I'm going to do it. I'm committed to this format. We'll see how it goes. So as this is Volume 1, I'll try and give the background as I understand it to this whole novel and then maybe talk about the story so far. Oh, sorry. Something I should emphasize just real briefly is that these volumes are decided by the publisher and they will vary from publisher to publisher. So I think there's another popular volume out there that is in two volumes and each volume is just huge. There's 120 chapters in total, I believe. This publisher has chosen to break chapters 1 to 32 into the first volume. That's 542 pages of text. Plus, if you add in the notes, it runs to 595 pages. There's a lot of end notes in the back kind of explaining things, which normally I hate flipping to the back and, you know, it is cumbersome. But I did find those notes really useful. I'm glad they're in there. Okay, right. The background to this. So this is a classic Chinese novel written in the 14th century, which I'm given to understand is very culturally important to China. It's a historical novel. So it was written in the 14th century, but it describes a period in Chinese history, which goes from 184 AD to 280 AD. And as the name implies, Three Kingdoms, oh, sorry, I should add something really quickly. The publisher I'm reading has called this Three Kingdoms. I believe it's more commonly known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But one of the little rules I have for this channel is I call the books based on what the title of the edition I'm reading is. So I'm going to call this video Three Kingdoms, because that's how the publisher has titled this. Obviously, it's all originally translated from Chinese. So anyways, as the title Three Kingdoms implies, this is a period of Chinese history when the China broke down into three separate kingdoms. So it had been one united kingdom. And then there was a, the dynasty fell, everyone fought everyone for a period. And then eventually, three separate kingdoms were established with three different people hoping to establish their own dynasties. Those Three Kingdoms had a period where they were fighting with each other and having diplomatic relations with each other and having their own internal politics and succession crises. And then eventually, China got reunited again, under one emperor. And that whole period goes from is close to 100 years 184 to 280. And I believe these novels, sorry, this novel, and four volumes is going to cover that whole thing. Although I'll be better informed on that once I finished this. The story where I'm at right now, at the end of chapter 32, is we're still kind of in the everybody is fighting everybody stage. Although there are definitely major figures who are shoring up major bases of power. So you can tell who's going to emerge as the dominant warlords warlords, but there are still a lot of players on the chessboard at this point. So as I mentioned in my started video, and I'll link to that in the description down below, one of one of the reasons I had wanted to read this book, why it's been on my to read list for forever, is because during the time I lived in Japan, I noticed that I would see this title everywhere in comic books and anime. And it was it was a very popular title in Japan. It's not a Japanese book is a Chinese book. But you know, one of the interesting things about living in Asia is realizing how much the Chinese classics influence Japan, Korea, Vietnam, just kind of all the countries in China's orbit. So you know, another reason I've been meaning to work my way through the Chinese classics is because they're they're not just the classics of China, they're kind of the classics of all of Eastern Asia. And the same way, you know, the classics of ancient Greece are kind of like the classics of the whole Western world, or at least that's the impression I get. But aside from that background, I really come into this novel, really not knowing much at all, just just having this vague idea that it was based on a period of Chinese history. I was also largely ignorant when I started this novel of how big the video games are based on this novel. I was aware that there were video games based on this novel. I think I may have seen some of them in Japan, like in the stores or something. But since researching this book a little bit on the internet, listening to a podcast based on this novel, talking to some of my co workers, I'm, I've become more aware of just how big of impact those video games have had, especially in the West. And in fact, Wikipedia, I think even has an imp. Where is it? They have a line somewhere, somewhere in the Wikipedia article that says, you know, thanks to video games. These books have now been introduced to a lot of people in the West. I largely missed that. And, you know, maybe it's an age thing, or maybe it's just because I stopped playing video games after high school and just kind of missed out on a lot of those video games that have been popular since then. But, but yeah, I came into this really not knowing anything at all. And right from the was overwhelmed with all the names that were being thrown at me. I mean, it's just saying, okay, so this guy's over here, and this guy's over here. And there are these 10 eunuchs in the palace, and here are all their names. And this eunuch was aligned with this person. And I'm reading this, I'm like, Oh, boy, I'm never going to be able to keep all these names straight, especially because they're not English names. So I've discovered in my reading, that if I'm reading books that are translated from a foreign language, or books that have characters that aren't English, my brain has a harder time latching on to the names. It's not unique to Chinese. I had the same problem when I was reading a history of the Greek War of Independence. Just all these names just kind of start to say sound the same to me, because I'm not used to them. So I was a little bit worried that I would just get lost in this sea of names. But the good news is, if you keep going forward, I think it does become clear enough fairly soon on that the major characters get enough space in the text that you know who they are, and you know who to watch out for. And if you happen to mess up, mix up a few of the side characters, you know, it's not the end of the world. There were maybe a few character arcs of minor characters that I had a little trouble keeping track of. And I suspect that this is a type of book that might benefit from being read and then re-read to kind of keep track of everything. One of the things I did when I realized how much names and how much history was in this novel is I tried to track down a podcast to be a companion to me reading this. And I found one called The Discourse of the Three Kingdoms, which I've already given a kind of mini review to on this channel. And I'll link to my review of their podcast in the description down below. But yeah, one of the things I was struck by, you know, it's mostly Western guys on that podcast, you know, British guys, American guys, and gals. But they discovered this book through the video games. Every single one of them claims to have discovered this book through the video games. Went down the rabbit hole, read and re-read the book, read the histories around the book, and are very conversant with all the characters. And I think there's a starting point for everything. And when you start this book, maybe you're missing, maybe you're not keeping track of all the minor characters. But then if you really want to get into it, you can re-read the book, you can research it and re-read it again. I am finding, and I actually, I did use another YouTube video, which I'll link to in the description down below, to also help me consolidate the chapters after I had read them. This was like an animated summary of The Three Kingdoms. I've only watched that video up until the chapter that I've completed. But again, to re-emphasize what I said earlier, I think I would have been okay without any of that. I mean, I've chosen to use extra resources to help me dig a little deeper into this and help me consolidate stuff. But I think if I had been reading this without anything, without any internet or anything like that, I would still largely have been able to follow what was happening. The notes in the back also help. And again, this is another thing where chapter one, there were how many footnotes? 33 pages of footnotes for chapter one, of a chapter that was only 19 pages. So you can do the math on that. It's like two footnotes on each page. And in addition to being overwhelmed by these names, I'm overwhelmed by all these endnotes. But the pace of the notes does slow down after chapter one. I think there's just a lot to introduce in chapter one. It's a historical novel. To me, it kind of reads a little bit like a history, or I don't know what Chinese historical tradition is like. But I think of some of the ancient historians that I've read, some of whom I've reviewed on this channel. Appian, Herodotus, in my youth, I read some of Livy. And, you know, the style of those ancient historians was to kind of mix in speeches and some dialogue into their history. And to me, this reads like that. It reads a bit like Herodotus, where, yes, there are dramatic licenses being taken where the characters are speaking to each other, or sometimes we know the thoughts of characters, but it largely seems like it's concerned with covering the history. I am becoming aware, though, partly through the notes at the back of the book and partly through like that podcast I was listening to, just how much liberty is the author of this historical novel has taken when compared with the historical record. So there's a lot of things he's kind of changed around to meet dramatic purposes. But I'm not going to try and get into that, I think. I'll just try and talk about the novel as it's written. What I've been told from Wikipedia and from the introduction to this novel itself is that the novel is such a huge part, has had such a huge influence on Chinese culture and literature, that to a certain extent, it's like almost more important than the actual historical record. And I wonder if maybe it's a comparison to like Shakespeare. So, you know, like Shakespeare's Richard III has had much more of an influence on any sort of remembrance of Richard III than the actual historical record or Shakespeare's portrayal of Henry V or any of Shakespeare's historical plays. We remember the Shakespeare, we don't remember the actual history. And Shakespeare's plays were largely historical, but he did change things around for dramatic purposes. I think this novel might be an analogous situation in China. Okay. So there's a lot that happens in this novel. And there's, yeah, there's a lot of switching sides back and forth and back and forth. And at one point, there's a note in the back of this, I forget exactly where it is, but there's one of these chapters where we go on a little bit of a digression where one of the general dies, and then instead of just switching to the next big general who moves in and conquers the territory, we go on a digression where all these smaller generals are fighting over the same territory. And there's a note in the back to the extent that it says, you know, a different storyteller may have just skipped this episode completely, because we could easily just skip past this to the next general conquering it. But this is a storyteller who is interested in and fascinated by all these mini reversals. So it's not simply that this general conquers and conquers and conquers, it's that he conquers, he gets betrayed, he has to run away, then he conquers again, then he gets betrayed. And it's just kind of all the ups and downs that all these people have, which makes this such a long story. I mean, like I said, I'm 542 pages into it. And we still haven't established the three kingdoms, the various different warlords are fighting over each other. So I'm not going to attempt to summarize all the different back and forth that happened during the first 32 pages of this novel. I don't think I could remember it all anyways. It would be a lot of hard work to recall all the different steps that go through on this. But just to maybe give a bare bones summary of this, and I'm going to try my best to make this comprehensible to somebody who's not familiar with the history, we'll see how I do. It's the end of the Han Dynasty. There is an emperor, but he's weak. And he's allowed himself to be controlled by the eunuchs in his court, of which there's a cabal of 10 eunuchs who, according to the novel, maybe not necessarily real history, but according to the novel, are all corrupt and conniving and are urging him to make bad decisions. At the same time, there's a peasant rebellion going on, which is in this translation called the Yellow Scarves. Almost everywhere else I've heard it is called the Yellow Turbans. Now, the Yellow Turbans pop up as antagonists a lot in this novel. The novelist is not really interested in going into too much of their particular story other than to just introduce them as antagonists, but there's some sort of peasant rebellion that's popped up because of dissatisfaction with the Han government. The peasant rebellion is put down by a bunch of different generals, and here we can see a bunch of the different warlords that will later play a big part in the story. Then we go back to the palace intrigue, where there's an intrigue between the eunuchs and the empress's brother and some of the other generals and nobility who are trying to make a counterweight to the eunuchs. There's also succession crisis or secession question. The emperor has two sons. Each son is favored by a different faction. The emperor dies and has one son appointed, who's supported by one faction, but the other faction is not happy. The eunuchs are trying to consolidate control, so a general from the frontiers, who hopefully I'm going to pronounce the names somewhat accurately here, Dong Zhuo. No, no, that's not right. Dong Zhuo, Dong Zhuo. Sorry, this is the first time my lips have formed these sounds, so I'm not realizing that the names are inaccurate until after they come out of my mouth. He gets invited by them to bring his army in and take control of the situation, which is a bad idea because he just decides to take control of everything. He has one of the emperors deposed and later killed, and then he has the emperor's younger brother appointed as the emperor instead and tries to use that emperor as a puppet to rule through him. So he's killed off the rightful emperor, put his younger brother on the throne, using him as a puppet, and according to the novel, is committing all sorts of atrocities and massacres and is hated by everybody. So there is a coalition of generals and nobles who rise up against him, which are led by, can I pronounce this, Yuan Shao, and initially all the coalition is against Dong Zhuo. But very early on, the coalition itself begins to fracture. They're more afraid of each other, more afraid of each other gaining power than they are of their actual enemy. So very soon, it's just everybody against everybody and they're all carving out their little power bases. And that's basically the story in the nutshell. There's some consolidation going on, but again, at the end of volume one, it's still largely a lot of different warlords. Now, I've been looking ahead a little bit at the history and where this novel is going, and there are going to be three kingdoms that are emerging. And the author of this historical novel, and yeah, here's where it's more of a novel than a history, has positioned the people who will go on to found these kingdoms as major players early on in the story. So for example, right from chapter one, when they're fighting the Yellow Turban Rebellion, there are characters who are given a greater prominence in that chapter than they would historically merit, because they're going to be important later on in the story. So the author is setting up all his important characters early on. So these characters are, there's according to Wikipedia, literally thousands of characters in this novel. But the closest thing this novel has to a protagonist is Leo Bay, again, hopefully I'm pronouncing that somewhat acceptably, who the author of this historical novel has chosen to make a very upright, honorable, and kind of likable protagonist. Maybe not entirely deserving of his historical record, from the information I've been able to gather, the historical Leo Bay may have been a lot more complicated. But in the novel, he's an upright man who always tries to do the honorable thing. He has two brothers, not blood brothers, but two other warriors who he bonds with early in chapter one, and they take a famous oath in a peach garden to always support each other and fight with each other until the day that they die. When I first came across this story, I think I was reading, like I mentioned, when I lived in Japan, the story was very popular in anime and manga. I think at one point I actually got a manga of this story, volume one, I thought maybe I'd work through it. And I didn't get very far, but I do remember the three brothers and the oath that happens very early on. And I thought to myself, like I said, I didn't really know anything about this. I thought to myself, ah, okay, the three brothers, these are the guys who are going to go on and found the three kingdoms. But no, that's wrong. The three brothers are all on the same side. They're all in one kingdom. So Leo Bay is like the leader. They call him the elder brother. The other two guys are like his sidekicks. Then up in the north, there's a guy named Cao Cao. The pronunciation of his name is spelled C-A-O-C-A-O. I've been listening to podcasts and YouTube videos, and I've heard various different pronunciations of it. Cao Cao, Cao Cao, some, some other pronunciation like Cao Cao, I don't know, something like Cao Cao. He has a reputation for cunning, for being extremely intelligent diplomatically. Like he knows when to be generous to win people over, but he is also completely Machiavellian and that he is only looking out for himself. And when it suits him to, to massacre, he will massacre. He is kind of being set up as the villain of this novel, although he also has many good qualities. And then down in the south, there's a third kingdom, which is going to emerge. So far in volume one, the family that sets up the south doesn't get a lot of print. They get a few chapters here and there, but they're largely, don't get focused on nearly as much as the other two guys. But there's, yeah, there's one of the generals and he actually dies. So the family, the control of the family goes down to his 20-year-old son. His 20-year-old son is known as the young conqueror because he's trying to become like another Alexander the Great and pick up where his father left off with the conquests. But he actually dies as well. And then it goes to his very youngest brother, whose name is Sun Quan. I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong. I, I, I've made comparisons. I think in the started video I did for this book, I said it's kind of like the Chinese Game of Thrones, which is kind of a lazy comparison, but maybe not altogether a wrong comparison. And if that's, if we go with that comparison a little bit, the southern family reminds me a little bit of the Starks, right? So you have the patriarch who dies very early on, and then it goes to the next eldest son who assumes the mantle and does a good job, but then he gets cut down tragically. And then it goes to the next son after that. Now the difference is the Starks were up in the north, they're down in the south, so you have to flip north and south. But other than that, they're kind of like the Stark family in this book. Yeah. And the, the, the, the son now, the youngest, the younger son, who's inherited the control of the family is, is the one who's going to eventually go on and found the dynasty of the southern kingdom. I am, I believe, again, looking ahead a bit on Wikipedia. So the, the three kingdoms are not formed yet, but the, the people who have found those dynasties have all been clearly established in the book. And Cao Cao's kingdom, at least is, Cao Cao's territory is shaping up. Liu Bei has been on a number of adventures, but hasn't yet established an independent territorial base or the territorial bases that he has had. He's lost. Again, there's a lot of ups and downs and ups and downs in this novel. And then the, the family in the south, after losing both the father and the eldest son, are now being established by the, the, the younger son. It is sometimes a little bit of a confusing novel, but all told a lot of fun. If you're the kind of person who gets into this, you've got to be a history geek to want to get into this. But if you're a kind of a history geek, somebody, somebody who likes actually getting into the details of all the different backs and forths that go on during the campaign, you don't want, you're not somebody who says, okay, just, just give me the simple version. I don't care about all the ups and downs. You actually want to get into all the ups and downs. You want, you actually want to get into all those little betrayals and all the changing of alliance and all the various different generals who kind of pop up and then get killed and then more pop up and then get killed. And, and, you know, there, there are people like that. There's a, you know, the whole community of history geeks on YouTube. If you actually like that stuff, then this can be a lot of fun. And I, I am one of those people to an extent. You know, I, I go in starts and fits about it. I I've got periods of my, over my life where I've read a lot of history and periods of my life where I haven't, but I, I can definitely get into it. And I, I am enjoying getting into that complexity. And like, like I said, after initially being worried that I was never going to be able to keep all those names straight, as you keep reading, the prominent names do become clear. So I'm, I'm, I'm feeling, I'm feeling less intimidated by this novel. Now that I did the beginning, I'm feeling like it's something I can do. So on to volume two, and then after volume two, on to volume three, and then on to volume four. And I will check back in and report after I finished volume two again.