Chapters 8-9 Great stuff here. These chapters belong to Diaochan. She is the woman who seduces both Dong Zhuo and his general Lu Bu, causing Dong Zhuo’s death. Diaochan is among the most well-known of the Magic cards from Portal: Three Kingdoms. As one of the only
Nights 52-69 We start with a surprise death: Ghabdan kills off a character. And so far, he gets away with it! Our attention shifts to the prince and princess, before landing on Princess Nuzhat for most of it. She gets what is becoming a somewhat standard role reversal in
Romance, Chapters 5-7 I enjoyed a lot of the episodes in these chapters. I’m hoping that I’ll continue to like the book as much as I have so far! In this part, the structure and tone felt like reading the Iliad (or a more extended narrative of
Nights 35-51 This section contains three stories. They are all “problematic” in some ways, especially around sex. The first involves two lovers, but the woman is a slave. The story does a good job of making their love look consensual and inevitable, despite the power imbalance. When “he sucked
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.
Chapters 1 and 2 Romance contains a lot of plot in each chapter. There is just too much for me to summarize it in each blog post. In just the first chapter, we learn about how the Empire is mismanaged, meet the three hero “brothers,” see them take their oath,
Nights 17-34 This week, for a long section, I’ve got notes on the structure, poetry, sex, and Magic cards in the Nights. The Nights begin with longer nights on average; this is the longest section of all, at nearly 150 pages this week (most of the rest are
Nights 1-16 Welcome to the first week’s reading! I found the first sixteen nights to be delightful. First, for those reading along: this is long! The first sixteen nights are 100 pages, and the next sixteen are 150 pages. I was expecting only 40-50 pages per week.
This intro sets the mood (the "strange nature" of the Nights) more than it describes the text’s history or later influence (these are saved for introductions to the second and third volume). The mood is “the collective dreaming of commercial folks in the great cities of the
Three Kingdoms: Introduction Before we get to the text, my edition has a 20-page introduction from 1999 by a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is a standard introduction: the book’s author, sources, themes, style, and influence. I once heard that you should wait to
Below is the schedule for this blog. I'm planning to do updates about The Arabian Nights on Mondays and Romance of the Three Kingdoms on Thursdays. The Arabian Nights 12/29/2025 - Intro 1/5/2026 - Nights 1-16 1/12/2026 - Nights 17-34 1/19/2026
They’re two big books, and both are so long that they require multiple volumes. The first is The One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), and the other is the great Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I’ve wanted to read both of them for at