Fireflies from Heaven

The plot continues at a fast pace, but I can still follow it. I am grateful that I know some of the characters from Magic cards. When a new character appears, I can assume they will stick around for a while if they’ve got a card associated with them. Lu Bu is the new long-term character this week. 

Staying on the subject of which parts of the novel became Magic cards, I thought the set designers missed an opportunity. In one episode in Chapter 3, the emperor and the prince escape an attempted coup and get lost in the wilderness: “The boys despaired. Suddenly thousands of fireflies gathered before them, emitting a beam of light as they swirled in front of the Emperor. ‘Heaven is helping us,’ said the prince. They followed the glow and soon found a road . . .”  (p. 48) This is a nice scene; it is cinematic, like a scene from a Studio Ghibli movie. It would have been a good Magic card.

My other favorite scene is more about describing one of the novel’s key characters. In Chapter 4, Cao Cao and a friend hide from Dong Zhuo. Then they overhear one of the hosts in another room say, “Let’s tie ‘m up ‘nd kill ‘m.” Cao Cao and his friend believe they are going to be assassinated, so they charge into the host’s room and kill everyone. Only too late do they realize that they were talking about a pig that they had planned to cook to celebrate their honored guest. Even worse, as they leave, Cao Cao kills the last surviving host because Cao Cao believes the host will follow after him for revenge. It’s a nice scene; we see it partly through the eyes of Cao Cao’s friend, who realizes that he may have joined up with a villain. (pp. 72-73)