A Bond
Second is the second volume in
Jin Yong’s (aka Louis Cha) The
Legend of the Condor Heroes series.
Thus, don’t bother reading further unless you’ve read the first
volume in St. Martin’s Press’s new translation, A
Hero Born.
The Legend
of the Condor Heroes initially
published in instalments, later as a novel, and now in English in
volumes, A Bond Undone
picks up events directly where A
Hero Born left off. Lotus Huang
and Guo Jing continue their star-shaped courtship, fighting their way
through a variety of kung fu masters and illusions. A good portion
of their fight is through Cyclone Mei, the deranged woman looking to
get revenge for her lover’s murder. Mei’s kung fu skills so
powerful due to her knowledge of the Nine Yin Manual, a host of
villainous characters follow in her wake, trying to get their hands
on the manual to learn its invaluable contents. Naturally, it’s
Guo Jing who unwittingly comes in contact with the sacred manual, and
who must fight even harder to stay alive.
If A
Hero Born was an action-packed
novel, then A Bond Undone
is practically non-stop. Scenes are introduced with the barest
minimum of details before feet and fists start flying, page after
page after page. While often approaching maximum capacity, Jin does
a good job delineating the scenes so as not to confuse the reader.
It is Hong Kong action films in written form (and likely much of
their inspiration), but each scene, for as fast as it moves, remains
focused. (It should come as no surprise the book has been adapted
multiple times for Chinese television.)
I have read a
lot of Chinese in English translation, and in A
Bond Undone Gigi Chang continues
rendering a high quality narrative. The specifics of the Chinese
language making it not the easiest transition, Chang continues to
show her skills at producing a narrative that maintains flow and
navigates the extremely tricky disparity between the two languages,
while still ringing natural to English speaking ears. I have read
some truly bad translations, and this is anything but. There are,
however, things that are untranslatable, which leads to:
It states in
Wikipedia that Jin’s novels appeal to high and lowbrow tastes (I
paraphrase). Given what comes across in the English translation,
this is a bit of a puzzler. The books seem straightforward
action-romance with a bit of the supernatural, nothing overtly
literary about them. This means that the appeal to higher senses
must be in the literary allusions and wordplay lost to English in
translation. Any hint at a line uttered by an ancient Chinese poet,
or subtle reference to a Confucian anecdote goes in one eye and out
the other of 99.9% of English readers without their knowledge.
Supporting this is the fact St. Martin’s press is marketing the
Condor novels as Tolkien-esque. Thus, while reams of academic papers
have been written on Tolkien’s oeuvre, that is not how his books
are primarily read. The same mindset should be applied to the
stories of Lotus Huang and Guo Jing, and their kaleidoscope kung fu
battles through Chinese history.
In the end,
if you enjoyed what A Hero Born
offered in terms of high-flying kung fu action spread across multiple
characters and highly imaginative fighting styles, then A
Bond Undone is the extremely
consistent second volume of the larger novel, Legend
of the Condor Heroes. Gigi
Change has done a magnificent job rendering the Earth Shakes Heavens,
Seven Dragon Palm, Lotus Sprouts Strong, and all the other specialty
moves and ideas into English, making for another fast-paced,
entertaining experience.
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