Nights 864-894 This was a long story that I rushed through so that I can finish ahead of schedule. It has a strong start. The poetry in the Nights can sometimes fail in translation, but here it’s strong. It starts with a garden and a few poems for
Chapters 96-68 Some pretty light chapters here: more Wei defeats, a couple setbacks for Kongming, and Sun Quan finally declaring himself a rival emperor. It seems like minor stuff, except for Kongming finally losing some battles. He has been so godlike up to now that he feels like a
Nights 846-863 This week is another fairly light story. A man pursues a married girl. We are meant to forgive them as they start an affair, since they are not Muslims when it begins. The story starts well enough, with the man trying to win her over by defeating
Chapters 94-95 Finally, Kongming falters. But it’s not his fault; one of his generals failed him. If not for Kongming’s unusual bluff (sitting by a turret, burning incense, and playing his zither, p. 1737), he would have likely been defeated and captured by Sima Yi. But I’
Nights 832-345 This week is a light and charming story about a poor fisherman named Khalifa whose luck turns around after he casts his net into the sea and pulls out some helpful talking apes. It also features Harun al-Rashid prominently and a new slave woman of his,
Chapters 92-93 This week’s chapters felt a bit minor, like we are waiting to get to something good. The plot isn’t too heavy: Zhao Zilong shows that he’s still got it, and Kongming steals the strategist Jiang Wei. He thinks he could be a worthy successor.
Nights 802-831 The second half of the story is somewhat unique among the Nights in terms of plot: Our hero allies with a very ugly woman to sneak past the virgin army, confronts his wife’s antagonistic sister, acquires a hat of invisibility and a rod to summon a
Nights 90-91 Meng Huo’s allies keep getting less and less “civilized” as Kongming closes in. Just before his seventh defeat, Meng Huo’s allies live in caves and have bizarre sexual customs (“they bathed in a stream where male and female mixed freely and coupled without prohibition, a
Nights 779-801 This long story starts with a Magian alchemist before going into very familiar tropes, e.g., a prince steals the clothes from a bird maiden that he has fallen in love with. It all felt very familiar, and to make it worse, when a new character entered
Nights 87-89 After a lot of heavy chapters where the first generation has mostly died off, we get what feels like comic relief. Kongming takes charge, and he repeatedly whips Meng Huo, the “Barbarian King” from Magic. Kongming defeats his first set of allies with his strategic mercy. Then,
Nights 756-778 These nights, we have a nested story about a king looking for a great story. The great story turns out to be that of Saif al-Muluk and Badi’ al-Jamal. In part, it’s a story about a prince and his friend who becomes vizier. But
I had a feeling this was coming. We finally get to the death of Liu Bei. It’s almost too convenient for the Shu; he had just failed to control himself and in some ways “deserved” to die for overzealously pursuing his Peach Garden Oath. Kongming comes in charge just