The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Part Two: The Story of the Stone

          

"Now let's take a look at reality. Little Hong Wong is indeed taken in hand by the educational establishment and force-fed languages, calligraphy, poetry...following which he's ready to start learning something--mathematics, for example...He passes his examinations and is ready for his first official appointment, and then what happens?"

"A superior who inherited the job from his uncle rams a barge pole up his ass."

"Good boy...Ox, at an early age, a Chinese genius gazes at the path that lies ahead and reaches for the wine jar. Is it any wonder that our greatest men have lurched rather than walked across the landscape as they hiccupped their way into history?"

- Master Li and Number Ten Ox, respectively

           I have a mild problem with sequels to books like this. I suppose the problem started with Harry Potter, weirdly enough, a series I have a mild amount of respect for. The first book set things up with such a sense of wonder and exploration that it was like stepping into a new world and viewing everything for the first time. It felt, honestly, like a vacation. You know, how you go somewhere and stay in a nice hotel, and you absolutely love every moment of being in the city or the small town or whatever, and you think you could stay there forever. To continue the comparison, though, the sequels are the moment you start trying to live somewhere and realize that this has become where you live, and all the things you found so fascinating are now terribly, terribly commonplace. So you have to find new things to do and experience, while all the while the things you used to find so cool become routine.
             Master Li and Number Ten Ox is no exception to the rule. Li's slight flaw is still the same, though Ox is less innocent. It appears that in between Bridge of Birds and The Story of the Stone, Number Ten Ox has become more streetwise and mature in his ways, and less innocent. He's writing his memoirs, which Master Li complains about for making him look "violent and unscrupulous, which is only true when there's a need for it." The story proper opens as Ox casually observes an assassination attempt in our heroes' favorite drinking establishment, the Worst Wineshop in China (yes, the one from Bridge of Birds), located in the Alley of Flies (guess what the wine's secret ingredient is?). From there, they are called to investigate a curious forgery and murder case that quickly turns into an insane quest involving a divine inkstone, a long-dead prince, several folk and fairy tales, and a mushroom-fueled trip to Hell. On their quest, they are accompanied by a concubine and a sound manipulator somehow interlinked with each other in a way that's best left unexplained, who have their own part to play in the mess.
              But it doesn't feel as natural or tight as in Bridge of Birds. Ox is less the innocent fool, which is a bit of a relief, but at the same time, Li feels scaled back from the man who would easily slice off a thug's ear in a bar dispute. There's better by-play, but Ox sometimes feels relegated to a position of observer where in Bridge he observed, but he had just as many insights that helped move the plot along. The plot seems like it's starting to become formulaic, which is bound to happen, but shouldn't in such a way that your readers can guess a few of the minor plot twists because you used them in previous books. The locations have been scaled down from the country-spanning plot of the first book, but some elements seem scattershot. It's as if Hughart felt like writing another book, but didn't have his heart and soul invested in it the way he did the first one. It's actually kinda sad in a sense. The whole thing ends in an anticlimax that barely reaches the highs of the first book, and the big reveals aren't so much reveals as casual observations, as if one trips over gods, monsters, and long-dead handmaidens several times a day.
             Which is not to say that there aren't lovely points in the book. The trip to hell is a high point, as is Master Li petitioning the Celestials to appoint a new goddess of prostitutes, and the bit on the eating habits of monks (for self-mortification). The darker tone of story and the air of desperation as the Neo-Confucianists (a group much like conservatives, but with classical philosophy degrees) have taken power and appointed an Imperial Censor. Master Li's class of people, it would appear, are on their way out where before they were a fixture in the opulent place that is the Middle Kingdom. And the dialogue flies fast and furious as ever, though Master Li and Ox seem a little more cynical than in their previous outing. 
            I suppose my reaction might be mainly to the tone, but it just didn't seem as right to me as Bridge of Birds was. That the villain built up for most of the book was defeated (and that's not a spoiler...there's a third book here, so the heroes have to win in some capacity) in such a handwaved manner that it almost felt rushed. and then the archvillain was presented in too affable a manner for the final confrontation to have any heft. When the loose ends started to get tied up, I was more glad that things were coming to any kind of conclusion. That shouldn't happen, particularly in a book written by someone like Barry Hughart. 
            In the end, I'm not as incensed or angry with the book as I am disappointed. It started out rather strong, sort of like a Chinoiserie version of The Name of the Rose, or a fantasy-historical murder mystery. It ended like a B movie where they ran out of budget halfway through. The whole thing was a solid book, and I admit, if I'd written Bridge of Birds, I'd have an almost impossible act to follow. But solid doesn't cut it when the narrative shows so many flaws, and I can't forgive or give this a pass for so many. It's worth a read if you want to revisit the world of Li Kao and Lu "Number Ten Ox" Yu, but not worthy of a solid place in the series. I have hopes for the third one, though. With certain notable exceptions like Star Wars (Empire, not Attack of the Clones) and Nightside, second volumes usually suck.


Next Week: The series concludes with The Eight Skilled Gentlemen.

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Part One: Bridge of Birds

"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao and I have a slight flaw in my character. This is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox, who is about to hit you over the head with a blunt object."

- Master Li

   

    Once every so often in your life, you come across a book that instantly makes it into your all-time favorites. A book where you can get lost in it, that makes you feel for the characters in it, and that you can hold up as unforgettable and instantly recognizable. In short, once every so often in your life, you come across what can only be described as a favorite book. Bridge of Birds is that for me, and I'll gladly put it in the pantheon along with all the rest. It worked overtime to make me feel good, to give me that world that easily sucked me in and didn't let go until the last lines. This is, for me, now one of my favorite books.

    I don't even know how I came across this one. I think I was looking on Wikipedia for Kaja Foglio (Wife of Phil Foglio and co-creator of Girl Genius)  to explain something for my then-girlfriend. In any case, through a random series of link dives, I stumbled upon The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Instantly I was intrigued, and after a bit of digging, came up with an Amazon link to a n omnibus edition of the books that cost far more than I would ever be willing to pay ($125)*. Luckily, my local library and the interlibrary loan program (which everyone should know how to use, and not just for academic research) came to the rescue and at long last I sat down to read it. 

     And it blew me away. The book begins in the small village of Ku Fu, where the annual Silkworm Festival, an event that usually brings the local merchants tons of money, is sabotaged. Due to the sabotage, the children of the town are exposed to poisonous fumes and all fall into a coma. Lu Yu, known as Number Ten Ox because he is the tenth person in his family and possesses great strength, is sent with the village's money to find a detective. After much searching and little luck, he finds a hundred year old man sleeping off a bad drunk. Upon coming back to consciousness, the man introduces himself as Li Kao, or as Ox begins to call him, Master Li. A former con man who decided solving crimes was much more challenging and interesting than committing them, Li turns out to be the greatest scholar in the Empire, despite his occasionally unscrupulous means. Li heads back to the village with Ox and immediately figures out who poisoned the slikworms and how. How to bring the children back, though, eludes him. And so, Master Li and Ox embark on a quest to find the medicine they need, or die in the attempt. 

      I could list everything I like about this book, but it would be a long list. Master Li is, despite the "slight flaw in (his) character" he's quick to remind everyone about, a thoroughly engaging character, be it his con jobs to make sure he and Ox aren't hurting for money, or his lightning-fast intellect. Li is what Sherlock Holmes would be if he were more personable and less aloof-- a ribald, snarky, hard-drinking, loveable, ingenious bastard. His "Watson" is our narrator, Number Ten Ox. Ox is an audience surrogate. Seeing Master Li through his eyes, what would probably be obnoxious to behold otherwise, or even flat-out illegal, is seen as ingenious and amusing. Ox gives us an interesting way of looking at the world, one in which we get a sense of wonder and interest in this world and how it works. The narrative voice and the strength of our main characters and even the minor ones like Miser Shen and Henpecked Ho helps to drag you into the story at the start and carry you through.

     The dialogue helps back things up, being deft and very, very funny. The sequence in the "worst wineshop in China" where Master Li has the shortest recorded bar fight in existence and then, using a severed ear, successfully bargains for several extravagant items with which to pull off a con with is particularly funny, but each bit of dialogue does its part, be it the duke's vizier's wife who calls her paramours (including Ox) things like "Boopsie" or "Woofie" or the almost too calm and nice Henpecked Ho, who is personable until Master Li suggests that an axe might fix the problem he's having with his monstrous wife and seven obese sisters-in-law. While these characters may have more informal speech patterns than their station and time period would usually allow, it helps draw us in. They talk like real people, therefore we can treat them like real people.

     The descriptions and the plot finally ram things home, though. Barry Hughart, the author of this book and its sequels, knows the importance of individual pieces building together to a whole. In particular are the sequences in the Duke's Labyrinths, where there is a definite sense of urgency as our heroes try to escape before the death that awaits them catches up. Many of the setpieces and the sense of emotion is shown, not told, something a lot of people who write fantasy and science fiction forget almost entirely. Hughart moves quickly from one setpiece to the next in a style that far outstrips Stephen Hunt's action sequences and doesn't stop to quit while it's got a minor lead. A good example of this is the "sword dance", where Ox must complete  a series of increasingly complex maneuvers with a pair of swords so he can appease a ghost. The scene is lit at dusk and instantly, an image of the scene and what was going on popped up in my head. 

     If there's anything at fault, though, it's that the mood doesn't work for the whole book. While the story has a light tone, there's one sequence in particular where a revenge murder is half-disguised as physical comedy. Granted, the subject of the cruel prank definitely deserved it, but when you start to think on it, it was really a nasty thing to do. Other points where the mood doesn't completely work include a palace stampede culminating in a gruesome axe murder and several other, more minor moments. But these are but specks on the large, intriguing work that is Bridge of Birds.

    In closing, the book is a fantastic read, and will go up on my top five along with Fool on the Hill, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and The Neverending Story (The original book, which I'll get to at some point). This book is worth a read, and not just that, but maybe a re-read, as there are probably things I've missed. It's funny, sad, exciting, and the ending had me half-crying, half-laughing. It's got all the components of the best of books, and it's infuriating that almost no one knows it exists. (Or at least, all the people I've mentioned it to have gone "What? Who?" So, once more for the cheap seats, READ BRIDGE OF BIRDS!

*Individually, the books are quite reasonably priced. It's just the omnibus editions, and the "limited" one in particular where they get kinda pricey.

Next Week: The Master Li series continues with The Story of the Stone, and I do a live reading of Joe Hill on Halloween. See you then!