Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Website – Penguin

The edition that I read was the Penguin abridged version that fits this sprawling epic into a single volume of a little over 600 pages. This is one of the four Great Classics of Chinese literature (along with Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber.) It offers a fictionalized telling of a period of Chinese history featuring a three-way civil war, especially centered upon the Han attempt to maintain its Imperial line against challengers, a fight that would ultimately end in the reunification under the Jin.

I’ve loved reading the Chinese classics. While this book and Water Margin feature massive ensembles of characters and could become clunky and cumbersome to read, they don’t because stories are told in intense battle-sized chunks and with a profound capacity to build character hooks that maintain clarity despite so many characters.

I would break this book up into three parts. The first (and by far the bulk of the story) focuses on a trio of great warriors that form a kind of blood-brother pact: Xuande, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei. Under Xuande’s leadership, these men fight to keep the Han imperial line intact. (It’s fair to say it could also be seen as focusing on the opposition to these men, notably Cao Cao.) The next bit continues the action as the masterful strategist, Kong Ming, tries to keep the wheels rolling on Xuande’s army after the dramatic deaths of the aforementioned trio, and finally there is a section in which it is as though all the great warriors are gone, resulting in an inevitable reunification as there are no longer those who can fight insurmountable odds. As I describe it, it might seem anticlimactic, but it is far so, but I would count it a tragedy.

To me, this book read more like historical fiction than did Water Margin, the latter (also excellent) is almost like fantasy: its characters are so much larger than life as to be veritably superhuman. That said, this novel does feature some magic, but the characters feel much more life-sized — if not without a measure of grandiosity.

I’d highly recommend this book for readers of historical fiction. It’s highly engaging and readable, despite being long and of epic of proportions.

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