Word of Honor 天涯客 / 山河令
Aug. 5th, 2022 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potofsoupDue to migraines I wasn't able to look at the screen much the past few days, which led to me rereading some old Jinyong books I had around, which then lead to me getting an e-reader and reading Word of Honor. I was pretty excited to read it, since I absolutely *loved* reading Guardian (镇魂) and was very impressed with Priest's worldbuilding and social commentary. Word of Honor ... is decent, but nothing amazing, alas.
It has the standard wuxia tropes, and it's still a little light on both the fighting logistics and the sociopolitical grounding to my liking, but it seems like most modern wuxia is like that. I guess I'm a traditionalist who grew up on Jinyong, and it frustrated me that I don't know which dynasty this is taking place, and the story didn't show at all the impact of all these wuxia people on the local population. (Seriously, modern wuxia authors -- the jianghu doesn't exist in isolation from the government and the commoners, it exists *between* the two, which is why *you need to show both*)
That said, I did like how the main characters are both older (in their early 30s), and clearly jaded about power, morality, love, etc. People being competent is my fave, and the main characters are definitely very competent. It was also nice that one of the characters was unrepentantly gay and everyone's just like "okay, you do you." I also liked the message about choosing to live a life of your choosing rather than going with the safety of the status quo -- the two main characters are both people who are at the top of their respective social hierarchies, who choose to leave that in order to find a different, simpler, more humdrum life. Similarly, there's the usual mcguffin of "the magic book of ultimate power" that comes with the usual caveat of "if you do it wrong and are overly greedy for power then you will go mad and die", but it's a nice twist that there *is* a person who actually achieves this ultimate power, and the result is that he lives forever but can only eat cold food, and after about a century of this he's like "fuck this" and decides to travel the world EATING ALL THE FOOD, while getting old and weak, because he's like life without living is not worth it. The epilogue is literally him being old and having ZERO REGRETS about getting to EAT YUMMY FOOD, and like, that's pretty rad.
(I vaguely poked at the TV show and it may have ended with the two main characters being trapped in the land of ice and snow eating only cold food??? To which I'm like .... that's actually explicitly against the point of the story??? Anyway, the main characters in the book basically end with getting to hang out and wrestle to see who's on top, and the main character who was gonna die gets cured by a friend who cares. It's a little less thematically satisfying, but hey they get to eat real food. Honestly, I would have been fine with the main character dying at the end, or choosing to live without martial arts, or maybe having to re-build his chi from zero. But anyway, friends are nice. I think Priest could have strengthened the idea about friendship and choosing to reach out.)
Another epilogue features the reincarnation of a pair of lovers from the story, which I also really liked -- after reading so much Western stuff it's nice to read something that, like, does reincarnation properly.
Overall, the writing seemed very sloppy and unedited, which, I guess, is the nature of serially written online fiction. (The chapters are really uneven in length, the pacing fluctuates a lot, and tThere were numerous author notes about having to take finals, or being sick.) It's also one of her earlier works (2010), and I'm wondering if some of her later works gives her more time to edit.
It has the standard wuxia tropes, and it's still a little light on both the fighting logistics and the sociopolitical grounding to my liking, but it seems like most modern wuxia is like that. I guess I'm a traditionalist who grew up on Jinyong, and it frustrated me that I don't know which dynasty this is taking place, and the story didn't show at all the impact of all these wuxia people on the local population. (Seriously, modern wuxia authors -- the jianghu doesn't exist in isolation from the government and the commoners, it exists *between* the two, which is why *you need to show both*)
That said, I did like how the main characters are both older (in their early 30s), and clearly jaded about power, morality, love, etc. People being competent is my fave, and the main characters are definitely very competent. It was also nice that one of the characters was unrepentantly gay and everyone's just like "okay, you do you." I also liked the message about choosing to live a life of your choosing rather than going with the safety of the status quo -- the two main characters are both people who are at the top of their respective social hierarchies, who choose to leave that in order to find a different, simpler, more humdrum life. Similarly, there's the usual mcguffin of "the magic book of ultimate power" that comes with the usual caveat of "if you do it wrong and are overly greedy for power then you will go mad and die", but it's a nice twist that there *is* a person who actually achieves this ultimate power, and the result is that he lives forever but can only eat cold food, and after about a century of this he's like "fuck this" and decides to travel the world EATING ALL THE FOOD, while getting old and weak, because he's like life without living is not worth it. The epilogue is literally him being old and having ZERO REGRETS about getting to EAT YUMMY FOOD, and like, that's pretty rad.
(I vaguely poked at the TV show and it may have ended with the two main characters being trapped in the land of ice and snow eating only cold food??? To which I'm like .... that's actually explicitly against the point of the story??? Anyway, the main characters in the book basically end with getting to hang out and wrestle to see who's on top, and the main character who was gonna die gets cured by a friend who cares. It's a little less thematically satisfying, but hey they get to eat real food. Honestly, I would have been fine with the main character dying at the end, or choosing to live without martial arts, or maybe having to re-build his chi from zero. But anyway, friends are nice. I think Priest could have strengthened the idea about friendship and choosing to reach out.)
Another epilogue features the reincarnation of a pair of lovers from the story, which I also really liked -- after reading so much Western stuff it's nice to read something that, like, does reincarnation properly.
Overall, the writing seemed very sloppy and unedited, which, I guess, is the nature of serially written online fiction. (The chapters are really uneven in length, the pacing fluctuates a lot, and tThere were numerous author notes about having to take finals, or being sick.) It's also one of her earlier works (2010), and I'm wondering if some of her later works gives her more time to edit.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-06 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-18 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-18 06:45 pm (UTC)Hi! Feel free to post a link. I'm not personally engaged in that particular fandom. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2022-12-18 07:39 pm (UTC)>> the story didn't show at all the impact of all these wuxia people on the local population.
Oooh good point. Since I don‘t know any old wuxia I lack the comparison, but this makes me put Jinyong higher up my reading list.
Can you reccomend any good translations or even bilingual editions?
no subject
Date: 2022-12-19 01:23 am (UTC)Alas, I don't read translations so I don't know any. This website seems to have all of them listed, though: https://wuxiasociety.com/jin-yong-novels/#novels I would suggest going with one of the shorter ones, like White Horse Neighing in the West Wind or Flying Fox of Snowy Mountains -- not the best, but at least it's fast going.