I finished reading "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" a few weeks ago and I've had a bunch of things to get off my chest about this book. For those of you unfamiliar with this work, it is a very long wuxia novel that takes place during the Sui-Tang era and has two protagonists. The book is very popular and has been said to be a major revival of the wuxia genre. This was Huang Yi's last book and it's considered a pretty big accomplishment for a famous writer. On reading the book, I noticed some oddities about it and it's these oddities that I want to discuss. Before I get to these oddities I'd like to point out that the book itself does have some good points so this is not all negative. To start with, the story takes place during the Sui-Tang transition; one of the most interesting periods of Chinese history, one full of famous figures and lots of battles. It also has an incredibly expansive cast in a very involved plot with tons of plans, tricks, and strategies. But on to the oddities. These are things about the book that I noticed but I'm not sure why they are in the book or why they work so poorly. Onto the list: Themes. On the face of things, "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" has pretty strong themes overall, but there's one overriding one that I have a lot of problems with. Namely, the book is about multiple factions vying over control of China and it poses the question that nobody can tell for sure which faction is going to win and who will be the next ruler. In a regular book that might make sense, but it's sort of dumb in this case because the winner is literally in the title of the book! The way the characters constantly ponder on this matter ends up being very off-putting. Two Protagonists. I've seen this aspect of the book praised. The way it works is that the story is written in a limited POV where we only get to see the thoughts of the two protagonists. This usually works well enough, but the two will often separate and have their own adventures, and those chapters will constantly switch between the two POVs. The problem with this is that their adventures aren't equally interesting so it's necessary to wade through the tedious material to get to the better stuff. Female Characters. There are an absolute ton of female characters in the story, and they often occupy positions of power within the martial arts society or among the various social or military associations. They are often at the heart of the different plots and schemes. And they don't matter. For one reason or another, the female characters tend to be removed from the climaxes of the different arcs so they generally don't end up doing anything important. It also doesn't help that, due to the way they are presented in the story, they don't tend to be very good characters either. For instance, despite the fact that she's supposed to be the wisest character in the story, Shi Feixuan ends up having the worst communication skills of just about any character I've ever come across. Wordiness. This is perhaps the oddest of the oddities about "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan". This book just has a lot of padding. There is a lot of material that either ends up not mattering or gets a whole bunch of repetition before it gets resolved. By the latter what will often happen is that instead of using 2-3 scenes to set up a scenario, the book will often use some 10-12 scenes. I'm pretty sure that the same story could be told in about 1/3 the text and be much better for it. Overall, I don't think that this book is bad. If it were then it wouldn't have such a sterling reputation. However, it's easy for me to see a lot of places where it can be improved. It's also worth noting that TVB adapted the show in the early '00s and they basically changed everything.
Ahh...Twin of Brothers. It wasn't very good but I got some nice quotes: " Choose a partner who loves you more than you love them"
Personally, I never evaluated Huang Yi's style of writing too highly. Still, it's better than a lot of the stuff translated here. I speculate it was well-received because Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling loved to talk about creating a future instead of accepting it. Can't say I was a Xu Ziling fan nanodesu, lol
it is probaby easier for me to accept the novel for i have read and later bought complete collection of the HK comics adaptation drawn by Tony Wong. i also have a copy of both version of Twins of Brothers live action drama (2004 and 2011). to me, the female characters in the stories are just so-so. but so were most other wuxia stories of last century. except for maybe a few, like Ren Ying Ying. Huang Rong, or stories that prominently features female mc
The problem I have is that the future they're talking about is the equivalent of building a bridge to the moon. No matter how the book talks it up, it's something that will never happen. And to make matters worse, Kou Zhong doesn't even want to get to the moon in the first place - he was just upset that some girl wasn't interested in him. There is a way to tell stories where the reader already knows the outcome and where we know that the heroes' plans are going to end in disaster. Films like "Titanic" illustrate some of the ways to do this. But "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" doesn't use these methods. Instead it continually insists on telling the reader how they might succeed and how they shouldn't be underestimated. The problem here is that the intrigue isn't told very well. The story is told entirely through a limited POV which means that we only ever get to see the world through the protagonists and how they view the situation. Which can be fine in some circumstances, but the problem is that they're actually pretty dumb so information only trickles to the reader in the form of endless conversations. And this endless repetition of mostly useless minutiae ends up diluting the impact of the intrigue. I've read tons of stories that do a way better job with just a portion of the content. I can definitely see that. An adaptation that gets rid of the chaff can only improve the overall quality. I can't agree with this. The female cast in "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" is treated particularly poorly; partly due to the way they're constructed, but even moreso due to how the POV ends up crippling how their characters can be explored. I can only count one and a half interesting female characters (the half is Wan Wan) in the book and one that's particularly bad. Most of the wuxia novels I've read do a much better job at this. Hell, even so-so is an improvement. I also rarely come across many books that spend so much time on romance so much and yet have so little interaction between the male character and his supposed love interest. Which is sort of a blessing in disguise as the interactions don't tend to be particularly exciting.
For wuxia it's mostly the same books that you're already familiar with: Jin Yong, Liang Yusheng, and so on. Hell, even Gu Long will come up with decent female characters when he doesn't decide to be stupid. Bear in mind though that I have a higher opinion of female characters that Jin Yong and the like write. So I'd count even minor characters like Chen Yuanyuan as pretty good. If you want an actual list, here's a sample: 白髮魔女傳 (ignore the ending) 七剑下天山 大唐游侠传 绝代双骄 (I read this ages ago so my memory might be a bit fuzzy) 碧血洗银枪 护花铃 Avoid 多情剑客无情剑 and the 楚留香 stories if you value your sanity because they are really gross. You should have already read Jin Yong's long novels so on the off chance that you haven't read his short novels I can recommend 碧血剑 (Xia Qingqing is sort of terrible but He Tieshou is amazing enough to make up for her) and 飞狐外传. More recently I've been reading Yue Guan novels and his female characters tend to be fantastic even though these are harem novels. I'm rereading 回到明朝当王爷 right now and Sheng Qiyun is a real standout in the book; honestly one of the most complex and multi-faceted female characters I've ever come across.
from your list, only one were on NU sadly. but i'll try matching them up to comics and drama/movies. chances are a lot of those were adapted into other form at one point in time. if i can't get novel, adaptations are fine with me. perhaps i already have read some of them translated into local language. thanks.
In that case I'd just suggest reading Jin Yong novels in general. They all have their good points, and the long novels (The Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Return of the Condor Heroes, The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, Smiling Proud Wanderer, and The Deer and the Cauldron) are all worth reading, and they tend to have at least a couple of pretty good female characters. Gu Long adaptations are pretty hit and miss and Liang Yusheng adaptations tend to deviate from the source material by quite a bit so the only one of these that I can recommend without any hesitation is 大唐游侠传 ("Paladins in Troubled Times"). A ton of Yue Guan's books either have been adapted or will be released soon so they're worth looking out for as well. Of these, I've watched 回到明朝当王爷 ("Royal Highness"), which deviates quite a bit from the book but is still pretty good, and 夜天子 ("the Dark Lord"), which deviates a lot less and employs the original writer as its screenwriter.
@ToastedRossi Also, I found Huang Yi's long sentences in Da Tang to not be too smooth. His typical long character appearance descriptions are tiresome, too. IMO, Jin Yong does far better in that department. Wonder if Huang Yi was using it for word padding. Still, better than Reverend Insanity, Martial God Asura and their cohorts. Reading the prose in those is like reading a child spit about his weekend.
Back to this point again; to really make intrigue impactful you need to see the punch and counterpunch as two (or more) different factions vie against one another. To see all the different characters and where their loyalties and interests lie and how these change the flow of the events. The problem is that to show this off, the POV needs to be expansive so the reader can see all these angles and have a good understanding of what's going on. There is a way to do this with a limited POV, but that requires that one of the POVs be a mastermind and have good information about all the events and people and all of their moves. A reader who isn't informed about who the players are and what they're up to isn't going to be able to keep up with any intrigue with even a modicum of complexity. As a result, "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" has relatively simple intrigue; it only looks more complex because of the sheer number of characters and the fact that the protagonists usually have only bad guesses as to what's going on. I agree, but I'd like to point out that there's a big difference in the length of these descriptions: "那白衣少女一住来，众人不由自主的都向她望去。但见她脸色苍白，若有病容，虽然烛光如霞，照在她脸上仍无半点血色，更显得清雅绝俗，姿容秀丽无比。世人常以“美若天仙”四字形容女子之美，但天仙究竟如何美法，谁也不知，此时一见那少女，各人心头都不自禁的涌出“美若天仙”四字来。她周身犹如笼罩着一层轻烟薄雾，似真似幻，实非尘世中人。" vs. [ 当尚秀芳像从梦境中的深邃幽谷来到凡间的仙子般出现于众人眼前时，整个大厅之内，不论男女，目光都不能从这颠倒众生的名妓稍稍离开。 她令寇仲同时想到师妃暄和婠婠。 尚秀芳既能令人想起前者清雅如仙的天生丽质；同时亦拥有后者那种迷迷蒙蒙的神秘美，合而形成另一种毫不逊色于她两人的特异风姿。 最使人倾倒的除了她那修长匀称的身段，仪态万千的举止神情外，更动人的是她那对能勾魂摄魄的翦水双瞳，其含情脉脉配合着唇角略带羞涩的盈盈浅笑，确是没有男人能抵挡得住的。 寇仲瞧得差点连此行的目的都忘了。 此时乐音忽变，一身素黄罗衣，浅绿披肩的尚秀芳，就那么出乎所有人意料之外的载歌载舞起来。 寇仲此时才看清楚她玉脸没施半点脂粉，可是眉目如画，比之任何浓妆艳抹都要好看上千百倍。更不知她是否刚从浴池走出来，没有任何簪饰就那么随意挽在头上的秀发，仍隐见水光，纯净美洁得令人心醉。 只听她唱道：“珠泪纷纷湿绮罗，少年公子负恩多。当初姊妹分明道，莫把真心过与他。仔细思量着，淡薄知闻解好么。” 她唱腔透出一种放任、慵懒而暗透凄幽的味儿，别有一番无人能及的清绮情味，声腔技巧均没半点可供挑剔的瑕疵，配合动人的表情，谁能不为之动容。 “洞房深，空悄悄，虚抱身心生寂廖。待来时，须祈求，休恋狂花年少。淡匀妆，周旋少，只为五陵正渺渺。胸上雪，从君咬，恐犯千金买笑。” 拌声把在场诸人引进了一个音乐的奇异境域里，她那婉转诱人的嗓音，透过不同的唱功腔调，呈现出某种丰富多姿，又令人难以捉摸的深越味道，低回处伤情感怀，彷如澎湃的海潮般把所有人心灵的大地全淹至没顶。 但最使寇仲不能自己的，仍是她那种“懒起画蛾眉，弄妆梳洗迟”，不经意地流露出来放任自然的美态。] And Huang Yi's character isn't even all that important despite all that verbiage while I don't have to bother telling you who Jin Yong's character is. Personally, I find that overly descriptive text like this makes it harder to envision what the character is supposed to look like, and makes her less memorable. Then again I think that this has a lot to do with the word choice and what aspects the writing is concentrating on. Also, I noticed that, due to the way the book is written, it's awfully hard to find anything in it: I was looking for the description of Shi Feixuan but I gave up. I suspect that Huang Yi wasn't writing like this to pad the book. There is a ton of padding but that's mostly wasted on things like talking to Wang Shichong five different times over the course of twenty chapters. I do wonder how this book, and Huang Yi in general got so popular. Is it just because nobody was writing the stuff he was back then or am I missing something? I didn't find "a Step Into the Past" very good either. Ouch. I was actually planning to read "Reverend Insanity" because it gets crazy praise, but the more I learn about it the less it sounds like something I'd want to read. It also doesn't help that those enthusiastic over the book are reading it in English as translations can mitigate the effects of bad prose. It's also a shame that translations also lose a lot of the quality of good prose as Chinese is naturally more elegant than English, and trying to capture that same elegance is so incredibly difficult to do in the latter.
A Step Into the Past isn't anything extraordinary to me, either. It was good enough for my taste, nonetheless. Reverend Insanity's praise is the same thing every time. MC is evil. MC is calculative. MC is ruthless. I didn't get far because the prose is such a turn off and the constant praising him doesn't help. For instance, the author writes. 恨！ 恨啊！ It's not just once or twice, either. It's constant. Labelling the actions as "incredible" don't make them incredible. Do it enough times, and it's a nuisance
I thought that it had some good ideas, and I definitely appreciate that it's basically the first book of its kind in Chinese. I still recognize the same overly repetitive conversations that plague "Da Tang Shuang Long Zhuan" though. Ick. I can't see how any of that is particularly appealing on its own unless it's paired up with good characterization and writing. Hell, anyone who's ever read "the Deer and the Cauldron" would have already seen this stuff except it's well written and has great characterization. Just writing evil protagonists that think shouldn't be good enough and readers should demand more. Maybe the translation saves the writing, but that won't do anything for me. By the way, I just finished a book so I'm on the lookout for more books, so if there's anything you've been excited about, I'd love to try them out! Especially if they have good female characters.
oh two dragon~ I hate see word like formidable, my niang over and over again plus round about description..... tbh somehow I kinda rember female cast a bit but when male pop up it become huh? intrigue? what's that fight scene... not bad romance... those two are suck overall imo fun read oh also I need a map