Confounding

Books 43-44

In these chapters, Kongming wins over the most important minds among Sun Quan’s group in the South. I’m not sure what it is, but Kongming’s incredible powers of debate and strategy strike me as too unrealistic. He’s always right, he can’t lose, his enemies find themselves confounded. Even his brother Zhuge Jin can’t get the better of him. Maybe I’ll change my mind about Kongming later. For now, his entry makes the story feel very different from what came before.

One of his tactics is to suggest that Cao Cao would be satisfied if the South offers two women to him (the two women who just happen to be married to Sun Quan and Zhou Yu). He describes how Cao Cao would keep them in the “twin towers” mentioned earlier (Jade Dragon and Golden Phoenix). This enrages Zhou Yu, and pushes him to want to fight back against Cao Cao.

I liked the call back to the twin towers. They should have been a Magic card. I didn’t notice any new cards here, but I should have called out Cao Cao’s “Capture of Jingzhou” earlier. A major point of debate among Sun Quan’s men is whether Cao Cao can be stopped now that he has taken Jingzhou.

Poetry Writing Constraints

Chapters 78-80 Tons of plot in these chapters. Most importantly, we get the deaths of a major character (Cao Cao) and minor characters (Xiahou Dun, Hua Tuo, Liu Feng). Hua Tuo’s death is one of my favorites, given my love of lost books. His “Book of the Black

The Devil Goes Down to Arabia

Nights 681-695 After the last couple weeks, I was worried that I was tiring of the Nights. But there was some good stuff here! My enthusiasm for the Nights has been restored. We can thank al-Asma’i, who the index says was a real-life expert on the

Head is a Hot Potato

Chapters 76-77 With the biggest death of the book so far, and likely one of the biggest in the book overall, we really get the sense of the end of a great one. Sun Quan beheads Lord Guan and quickly regrets it. Sun is advised that Liu Bei will

Seriousness replaced absurdity

Nights 649-680 It’s hard for me to say why I found this story so much more tiresome than what came before it. Maybe I’m getting tired of the Nights. Maybe work is particularly stressful right now. If I were to look for an objective reason, I’d

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Poetry Writing Constraints

The Devil Goes Down to Arabia

Head is a Hot Potato

Seriousness replaced absurdity