Chapters 50-52 Like Arabian Nights, Romance is episodic. And its episodes don't end at the chapter breaks. The chapters often end on cliffhangers, where we are left wondering if a character will die or not. This is like Shahrazad. To stay alive (or in the case Romance,
Nights 390-413 This week had twenty-five stories in about thirty-three stories, one of the highest number of stories we’ll have in any given week. Many of the stories were about love and money, two of the themes that are common throughout the Nights so far. A
Chapters 48-49 In these chapters, we get the last moments before what I expect will be one of the story's greatest battles. Cao Cao sings a prideful song. Zhou Yu worries that their plans to burn Cao Cao's army will fail. He is worried they
Nights 367-389 This week, we get a decent end to the Ebony Horse story. Then we get a long story about lovers. We’ve had a lot of these; this one distinguishes itself with a few strong moments (a friendly lion in Nights 373-374 (pp. 155-156), a
Chapters 45-47 We get some more scheming and spying. It’s good suspense ahead of what I believe will be a decisive battle! But I have some complaints. Zhou Yu continues to work with Kongming, but Zhou Yu also seems to hate him and Liu Bei for no reason.
Nights 343-366 We start the week with some unremarkable short stories, then a couple of nasty misogynistic stories about sex with animals, then finally the Ebony Horse. I know the Ebony Horse from Magic, so I was looking forward to seeing what it was. It's awesome! The
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,
Nights 320-342 The first story ends with some graphic violence and sex. The woman who pretended to be a king dispatched her enemies: the first was “flayed and his skin stuffed with straw and hung up over the gate to the arena. A pit was . . . dug outside the city
Chapters 41-42 There isn’t a strong theme in these chapters, so I picked a loose one: weapons. We get a brief view of “Lord Guan, sitting astride Red Hare and gripping his Green Dragon.” (p. 747). But more importantly for these chapters, we learn “Cao Cao had two
Intro to Vol 2; Nights 296-319 Book 2 of 3 begins with a short introduction on the history of the text. In short, “there is no such thing as a canonical text of the Nights with a fixed number of stories in a fixed order.” (p. xi). There’s
Chapters 38-40 At first, Zhang Fei and Lord Guan doubt whether Kongming will be effective. But he soon proves his value. First against Xiahou Dun (pp. 704-706) and then against Cao Ren (pp. 721-722), Kongming unleashes fire against his foes. He wins two massive victories over larger
Nights 282-295 & Bonus Story: Ali Baba The Ka’ba is the unifying theme this week, reminding us we are in Arabia. It appears in both this week’s big stories (night 282, p. 208 and night 294, p. 927). I liked the stories. The first one had a