And for petty, petty reasons. From a story point of view, it starts out reasonably realistic, though I still can't think about the logistics of raising a trained army of , men on the fly, in the 1st century. Then it slowly gets odder and odder - a ghost apparition, Daoist priest does magic, reanimated dead bodies, ghost revenges, Kong Ming has seven grains of rice in his mouth when he is buried so he can stop his star falling from heaven tipping off the other faction , and he succeeds in pushing the star back post-mortem , ghosts coming for revenge, and, seasoned warlords, suddenly dropping dead from surprise or shock.
Also gunpowder in the 1st century AD. A second note to the translation, it is all in present tense. Which does link to the original Chinese being basically tenseless compared to English grammar , but it makes it very very hard to get a sense of timing. It all feels like it is happening in the now, not over years.
I've reread my review I generally review asap for freshness and noticed - The story has so many subplots and biplots and time over years and at least as many people to start. Thus has it ever been". In truth, this book hits on the transience of all things, empires most absolutely included. Bromances excluded tho. It's quite an amazing scope. Steeped deeply in Confucian filial piety, entire clans suffer - mortally - the consequences of almost infantile seeming whims. It's semi-fictional and certainly the shapeshifting Daoist priest and his zombie army is probably fiction, but most people written about here that have lived and died probably did live and die.
From this book, the Chinese have the expression : "Speak of Cao Cao, and Cao Cao arrives", which cognates exactly with our English "Speak of the devil" Xuande's a hero mostly because half-way through spoilers he has the marvelous idea to not raise an entire city to the ground, with the people. The wondrous novel idea gains him the hearts of the common people also there were common people left to give their hearts. The kingdoms three have vanished as a dream, The useless misery is ours to grieve.
Oct 31, Mizuki marked it as to-read. I admit I laughed my ass off when I was watching the few anime episodes of this one Looks like there still are some soft power left in Chinese classical literature after all I fucking love Three Kingdoms for many reasons and hope to reread it again in the future. I enjoyed this book so much more than I thought I would, to the point of getting Dynasty Warriors 8 and becoming interested in the Chinese history of the period.
In this review I'll try to cover fair warnings to the reader, some notes on the Moss Roberts translation specifically, why this book had such a huge impact on me, and also just a couple things in it that I just particularly loved and wanted to high I fucking love Three Kingdoms for many reasons and hope to reread it again in the future.
In this review I'll try to cover fair warnings to the reader, some notes on the Moss Roberts translation specifically, why this book had such a huge impact on me, and also just a couple things in it that I just particularly loved and wanted to highlight since this book is so damn long. Specifying because many editions and translations have been grouped together confusingly on Goodreads. Challenges in Reading Three Kingdoms This is not a light or easy read, but I found the process to be very rewarding and entertaining.
For me, it was a lot of work to fully engage with the text. I spent a lot of time reading as well as going back to reread earlier sections, remind myself what was going on, look up characters on Wikipedia and on Kongming. Obviously none of this is necessary, but this was educational, entertaining, and helped me appreciate the book better.
Three Kingdoms covers a huge span of time to AD and multiple generations, with characters popping up here and there that haven't been seen in many chapters. The huge cast and the romanized names are probably one of the biggest hurdles for an English speaker. I have some passive fluency in Chinese having grown up with it, and looking up the proper pronunciations of the names helped to distinguish between characters that have similar romanized names in English, but even I still had trouble keeping some of the names straight.
Playing Dynasty Warriors 8 halfway through the book was actually surprisingly helpful in providing some cartoony faces and voices for the characters. Fortunately, for the most part it is not too difficult to get a handle on the key players and a couple important supporting cast members, and it's not necessary to stress over the rest.
Asides from the characters, the first 20 chapters were especially difficult as they fly through multiple battles, territorial changes, etc. Full disclosure: I read the first 17 chapters in the Yu and Iverson translation.
It gets easier and more exciting later on. It also helps to have maps handy for some of the battles, which Moss Roberts includes, but I didn't bother for the most part and still thoroughly enjoyed it. Footnote Buddies: Moss Roberts and Mao Zonggang Moss Roberts includes timelines as well as commentary on the themes of the book, the historical context, and some information on the recensions. Roberts also translates Mao's notes and includes them as footnotes to the text, and also makes notes where Mao removed information that was present in earlier recensions.
I devoured every single footnote. Moss Roberts also has a very excellent commentary in the back of the book discussing the importance of the work, the history of the different recensions of the book, and the historical and contemporary views of the book in taking pro-Liu Bei vs pro-Cao Cao stances.
His footnotes cover differences between the Mao recension and earlier "drafts" of Three Kingdoms, so that we can understand the evolution of the views of Cao Cao as a hero vs villain. My favorite Mao footnote is in Chapter Roberts helpfully footnotes the poem to let us know that it is written by Cao Cao's teenage son and that the poem is terrible in order for us to fully appreciate just how much of a troll Zhuge Liang is being.
Why I Found Three Kingdoms Impactful Obviously, Three Kingdoms is an important cultural touchstone across multiple East Asian cultures, and is still a source for popular movies and television shows today, not to mention video games Dynasty Warriors musou series, Total War: Three Kingdoms. Reading this book gave me that context and the pop culture references, and also gave me an experience that I could share with my dad who read it in Chinese as a kid.
With the caveat that not everything is historically accurate, I still felt that I got a pretty good handle on the history of the Han dynasty's downfall, the chaos of warlords fighting for power and territory, the development of the Three Kingdoms Shu Han, Cao Wei, and Eastern Wu and their conflicts, and the rise of the Jin dynasty. More importantly, I felt that the book and the accompanying essays were extremely useful in providing insight into historical Chinese views about regime legitimacy, the Mandate of Heaven, and justified regime change or revolution.
You also truly get the sense of a land where governments can destabilize and everything can go to shit really quickly. The moral standards described in Three Kingdoms are weird today even by wartime standards, and give some insight into Confucian morality while sometimes subverting it. There are also some deep themes here worth chewing over during reading, mainly: the meaning of loyalty to friends, sons, fathers, or to the state?
That being said, this book is super long so here's just some specific shit I really liked and recommend keeping an eye out for. Aug 21, Mel rated it it was amazing Shelves: chinese-literature , translation , period-of-disunion , ming-dynasty. I started reading "The Three Kingdoms" a few weeks ago. I finished volume 1 this weekend.
I'm reading the Moss Roberts translation as my Chinese is nowhere near good enough to tackle reading it in the original. I have to say I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. I have to say I think having played Dynasty Warriors 4 first really helped. With the cast of 's having played the video game and been able to put faces to people helped keep them all straight a lot easier. I also think hav I started reading "The Three Kingdoms" a few weeks ago.
I also think having studied the Han and knowing the history makes it more interesting too. One of my favorite things about the Han was the way they took children and folk songs as omens of events that were happening. When these songs were popular people would interpret the meaning and it's reflection on the dynasty, part of the whole mandate of heaven. I'm so pleased to see this incorporated into the book.
When events are happening advisers will say have you heard this song popular in wherever I think it means this and you should therefore do this. I found that I quite liked the character of LuBu and was sorry to see him go.
I felt he got a bad reputation as really he wasn't that much worse than Liu Bei swapping allegiances all the time. I thought there were some good moments, the one that sticks out the most was when Liu Bei, the hero, was fleeing for his life and having people feed him and protect him, he stopped at a hunters house, but the hunter could find no game to kill for him. So the hunter killed his own wife and fed her to Liu Bei, when Liu Bei asked what the meat was the hunter told him it was wolf.
The next morning Liu Bei found her body, minus the arms, and realised what had happened. He was not horrified as his cannibalism but in awe of the great loyalty of the man and recommended him for honors when he returned to safety for the man's great sacrifice. I also like how there is no equivalent of "don't kill the messenger" whenever anyone delivers a message that they don't like the messenger is always killed!
But so far it's not just been lots of battles, though there have been a fair few. There's also a lot of politics and intrigues and plots and that's been very enjoyable. Loyalties shift and switch a great deal, and there are a lot of executions. But I enjoyed the portrayal of the problems of power between the eunuchs and the families of the Imperial consorts. While not having the characterization of "A Dream of Red Mansions" there is a lot more than I was expecting.
I think one of my favorite moments of Cao Cao was when he accidentally killed the family that was protecting him because he thought he was going to be killed, but they were just talking about a pig. After wards when he saw his friend on the road he had to kill him anyway, even though his friend was loyal, as otherwise the whole village would have pursued him for what he'd done.
Such is the making of the villain. This morning I finished reading Three Kingdoms Volume 2. I'm still enjoying it very much.
Volume 2 had Zhuge Liang appear and that was really great. Volume 2 had the famous battle at Red Cliff where they set Cao Cao's boats on fire. The local international channel here is showing the tv version of Three Kingdoms, in Mandarin with traditional subtitles I was finally able to pass where they were at in the story and suddenly it became much easier to watch when I knew what was going already.
I enjoyed reading about Zhuge Liang's strategies a great deal. He does seem to be a bit too perfect, but that's also kind of fun. I also like the version I'm reading a lot as when discussing him calling the wind in the battle at red cliffs the footnote stated," On Dun Jia evading stems , the technique by which Kongming will summon the winds see Kenneth J Dewoskin Doctors, Diviners and Magicians Of Ancient China" I think I shall have to look that up!
But the battle of red cliffs wasn't the only fun part, there was also Liu Bei's wedding to Lady Sun which was really great.
I like her as she also studied the Martial Arts and had all her maids taught and when Liu Bei showed up in her room for the wedding night it was filled with weapons. It was also interesting to see how ruthless the advisers were, particularly Pang Tong, despite working for the "hero" he was full of advice about assassinating people and stealing their countries while you could. Even when Liu Bei absolutely refused he was still hatching plots to get people killed.
It was interesting to see how ruthless everyone really was. I'm glad I'm still enjoying the book, now I'm half way through at pages I think I might take a quick break to read the Ming dynasty stories that I bought. Though part of me is worried if I do take the break I'll never be able to remember who everyone is when I go back.
Still I guess that's what the info screen on the video game is there for. Last night I finished reading Three Kingdoms Vol. I enjoyed the beginning they had a Taoist magician show up, and a really neat fortune teller.
It was interesting to read the descriptions about what they could do. In fact I think I have come across the description of those two in some of the academic books I've been reading. After that it got a bit repetitious and then all of a sudden everyone started dying! Which made it interesting and fun again. Half way through the book the three main hero characters died, as did the villain, and sons and advisers took over.
I liked the fact that Zhang Fei was murdered in his sleep and Guan Yu go to die heroicaly in battle. I was a bit surprised at Guan Yu having diety status to start with. But I liked that he kept coming back as a ghost and saved his son on more than one occasion. Zhuge Liang went to fight the Nan Man.
Which I enjoyed immensely as that was by far the hardest level in the video game I have so I really wanted to see what his master strategy against the elephants was! I'm still enjoying it, though of the "four classic novels" that I've read I think this is the 3rd best. But it's good to read. Only or so more pages to go! I'm finally finished with Three Kingdoms! I have to say I was more than underwhelmed with the last part. It took a severe effort of will to bother finishing it at all.
All the cool deaths happened in volume 3, 4 just seemed to mostly be about people I didn't really care that much about. I was looking forward to reading "the ruse of the empty city", but found it to be only a very short description in the chapter which was quite disappointing.
I guess Zhuge Liang's death was a little interesting but at that point I had grown kinda bored with him, despite his great strategies against Sima Yi all he seemed to managed to accomplish was a successful retreat every time. Not very impressive. On a brighter note though I did play Sima Yi tonight in "Dynasty Warriors 4" and that was lots of fun he got to shoot purple that matched my hair!
Hmmm, I seem to be incapable of a serious review, I blame the stress of moving. I did enjoy the series as a whole, I think the first half is by far the best. Though I definitely felt like it lost some steam after everyone died. But I am glad I read it. My next excursion into Chinese literature in translation will be Creation of the Gods which I'm looking forward to a lot.
But I should probably read the bibliogoth reading list book first. Nov 10, Jonathan rated it it was amazing Shelves: china. Really long, really good. And what follows is a somewhat tedious review, so don't read it. It's my first read-through and I'm not sure I can offer much in review. But my favorite characters were Zhao Zilong for his bravery, honor, and integrity , Zhang Fei for his heroic appetite , and Kongming for his wisdom, but not so much for his pragmatism.
Liu Bei, as portrayed, seemed to become less of the figure near the end, and this was a letdown, at least for my emotional attachment to him. Deng Ai Really long, really good.
Deng Ai was a character one would have longed to see in greater detail. Zhou Yu was wise and pragmatic , but somewhat conniving and jealous. Wisdom and honor seemed to be conjoined twins. Though not always Zhang Fei, Zhou Yu, and etc. And wisdom and pragmatism are sometimes seen as equated with each other, but in some scenes pragmatism is cut off from wisdom and placed in an inferior position.
The book isn't quite clear on this, I think. The book is also not clear when it renders its judgements on characters. The judgements seem very arbitrary with some characters, yet more in line with the book's themes of wisdom and honor in judging other characters. And unity and division, the yin and yang which I have no knowledge of , would seem to be a major theme, if not the theme of the Three Kingdoms.
Heaven still seems to be the ultimate judge in the events of the land, yet wisdom and honor give men place in heaven and remembrance on earth according to the story. So I write all that to get my first thoughts out and down on digital paper. Oct 20, Olga rated it liked it Shelves: china.
An exelent source if you are looking to find out more about the culture, society, morals and history of china the last one is greatly helped by the essays in the afterword. On the other hand, I would not recomend it as a leasure read for the most people. As a novel, it gets incredibly repetitive - unless you are a hardcore military strategy fan, there is only that many times before reading about two generals fighting, one feigning defeat and leading the other one into a trap gets old.
To be fa An exelent source if you are looking to find out more about the culture, society, morals and history of china the last one is greatly helped by the essays in the afterword.
To be fair to those who do enjoy the study of war, such occurences do contain variation, but alas, i am not one of those. And if you are not either, this is going to be another problem - the breakdown of the novel into military strategy, political manipulations and everything else has a ratio of about 6 to 3. The amount of characters has beeen mentioned here before.
Prepare to be given a briefing on a family history, offices held and a general story of a life for anyone who appears for more than four pages. Prepare to be given a description every time an official has one opinion regarding a decision to be made, consults the advisiors who agree, consults advisors who disagree, gives replies to both and only then acts in one way or another. Now, granted, this book was meant to be read and studied in quiet by the nobles versed in history, philosophy and the arts of war, who would be acquainted to a much different storytelling tradition.
Not by an attention-deficient college student on a bus. For anyone choosing to read it, I strongly advise to research the background of the work and the actual history of the time period described. As much as it is counter intuitive to the general consensus of "no spoilers", I personally would have read this work very differently have i not started out with the blank slate.
Apr 16, Koit rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Vol. Brewitt-Taylor, Robert E. Hegel ePub Free Download. Many editions of Three Kingdoms have appeared, and the novel has been translated into foreign languages since the end of the 17th century.
This English edition, by US sinologist Moss Roberts, is based on the Mao Zonggang edition published during the … of him in history romance of the three kingdoms vol 1 jesus christ is a pdf Jesus c. This epic saga of brotherhood and rivalry, of loyalty and treachery, of victory and death forms part of the indelible core of classical Chinese culture and continues to fascinate modern-day readers.
In EC, the year-old rule of the mighty Han dynasty came to an end and three kingdoms contested for The bold struggle of the three heroes seems doomed until the reclusive wizard Chuko Liang offers his counsel, and the tide begins to turn. Discover it in this new edition with maps, footnotes and an historical introduction. This is Volume One of the story Totally four volumes. A DRM capable reader equipment is required.
If the kingdom controlling Yunnan goes to war, roll to attack the southern tribes as well as the other kingdoms, with a —1 adjustment to Romance of the Three Kingdoms — Vol. Three Kingdoms is a classic historical novel. It was also the first Chinese novel with each chapter headed by a couplet giving the gist of the content. Forums Search forums. Users Registered users Staff Members Current users.
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Click here! JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Author: Thread starter SanBti Start date Sep 4, Tags classics ebooks epub historical fiction ebooks luo guanzhong translator: moss roberts. Rate this eBook:. Total voters 0 Poll closed Nov 3, Country Papua New Guinea. Credits to: SanBti. You need to hit the "Like" button or to Reply to this Thread it in order to unlock this hidden content.
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