I had turned up a book for Oriental fantasy this year- a reimagining of the Romance of Three Kingdoms in female form. The book is called Strike the Zither by Joan He. I had read loads of online novels written in Chinese set in this period, making this one of the most known historical periods to me personally. But this will be the first novel set in that period that I read in English.
I have just gotten my hands on it and have not made much inroad into it. But so far this does feel to me like this is inspired by Romance of the Three Kingdoms in basic characterisation for the good guys. But the turn of events have already been significantly changed in an important way two chapters in albeit potentially still heading in the same broad direction. Subsequently, the dynamics between the protagonist and her arch nemesis is drastically different from the original Chinese classic and how an average Chinese familiar with the period or the original work would think about it. I think I really welcome and value this approach chosen by the author since one of my major difficulties with Grace of a King, even though I don’t refute that it’s well written, was that there was not enough differentiation from real history as I knew it for me to not get bored with the story.
One small nitpick is that the gender nouns and pronouns seem a little confused to me (I’m about to start chapter 7 as of the time of writing which is just one day before the actual post because I’m updating this post to reflect the most up-to-date progress on it) but perhaps there are more nuances to the world that will resolve itself to me so I’m reserving judgement on this point until I finish the book.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 