Rating Chinese Books by Enjoyment and Difficulty - 21-30

It’s been nearly a year since the last time I wrote one of these and I am still working through the backlog. Here are 10 more Chinese books that I’ve read with a bonus DNF that I may get back to one day.

闯荡江湖二十年 by 龙乘风 | Roaming the Jianghu for Twenty Years by Long Chengfeng

This was my final book of 2023 and I read it in only a day or two. I heard about Long Chengfeng being a Gu Long imitator from Wuxia Wanderings and it definitely fit the case here. I definitely liked the book less than the previous Gu Long book that I read and it suffered from my least favourite Wuxia trope - characters new or old showing up any time our current characters have any conflict.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐

紫川4 - 帝都赞歌 by 老猪 | Zi Chuan 4 by Lao Zhu

The fourth volume was the longest in the series so far and it was probably my least favourite of the whole series. I found as though one of the main points of conflict was resolved off the page and a lot of the content from the second half of the book was just ignored in the final volume as the author wanted to wrap things up.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

射雕英雄传 1 by 金庸 | The Legend of the Condor Heroes 1 by Jin Yong

I took part in the Chinese Forums Book of the Year read-along in 2024. We read what has been referred to as “The Chinese Lord of the Rings”. I remember really enjoying the book and not finding it too difficult to follow along. I found this quote I made on the forum post and I agree with what I wrote at the time.

I’ll be starting chapter 8 today. It’s very exciting, but I’ll agree with previous sentiments that fight scenes are my least favourite section.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

射雕英雄传（二） by 金庸 | The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2) by Jin Yong

I DNF’ed the second volume of Legend of the Condor Heroes. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have read two books from the same series back-to-back. It’s a rule I now follow in English and Chinese and have found that it helps prevent burnout. I may restart the second volume again at some point as its impact is still undeniable.

I’m up to Chapter 14 and have been finding it a bit of a drag recently. I’ve been lacking motivation to read and I’ve been reading other stuff instead.

For some of the authors I’ve read multiple books by, going back to their writing is like wearing a pair of old slippers, but not with Jin Yong. I feel like I need to get used to his writing all over again after only a short break.

Enjoyment: DNF / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

坏小孩 by 紫金陈 | The Bad Kids by Zijin Chen

This is the most disappointing of all the books on this list. I had watched and somewhat enjoyed the TV adaptation before reading this and the same author had written my book of the year the previous year. However, I found that this book felt the need to recap information every chapter and spell things out very clearly. Overall, I much prefer the adaptation, and I wouldn’t recommend the book over it unless you are very early in your Chinese reading journey and think that being treated like a child will be useful for your comprehension.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐

紫川5 - 一统天下 by 老猪 | Zi Chuan 5 by Lao Zhu

The final volume of this series took some departures from where things had been going in the previous volume. I feel as though the author had more ideas but then decided that he wanted to wrap things up. I really enjoyed the ending and in particular the dynamics between two of our main characters.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

雪刀浪子 by 龙乘风 | Snowblade Vagabond by Long Chengfeng

Considering that this was as short book, it took me a lot longer to read than it should have. This book has the worst example of my least favourite Wuxia trope that I mentioned earlier. It seemed as though characters would appear out of the blue all the time. The best thing about this book is its Gu Long like prose.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

猫城记 by 老舍 | Cat Country by Lao She

This is another books that I had high hopes for. It was a political satire by one of China’s greatest authors. Unfortunately, while I liked some of the allusions, I found the story to be very uninteresting. This was another book that took longer to read than it should have.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

尸语者 by 法医秦明 | The Speaking Corpse by Qin Ming (Fayi Qin Ming)

I listened to this book via TTS using the Readest app at the same time as reading on my e-reader. It was a good experience, but this isn’t the sort of book that I typically enjoy. This is a very popular series of crime scene investigation novels. Others might enjoy, but I prefer crime to be more mysterious and psychological. The use of many medical terms was quite difficult.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

解密 by 麦家 | Decoded by Mai Jia

This book had been on my e-reader for a long time, and I am glad that I read it. I enjoyed the first half of the book much more than the second. I liked watching the loner genius and seeing his interactions with others. After he became an adult, I became much less interested in the story.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

血海飘香 by 古龙 | Perfume in the Sea of Blood by Gu Long

It would have been hard to live up to 流星蝴蝶剑 as that is one of my top 5 Chinese books, but this didn’t do it for me. However, out of all the books that I read in this slump, this along with Legend of the Condor Heroes are the ones that I would consider revisiting.

The story was full of twists and I enjoyed the prose once again, but the characters felt weaker.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ / Difficulty: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Overview

For these ten books, I found myself in a bit of a Chinese reading slump. That was probably also due to me getting back into reading English books. If you want to see what books I have read since, you can check out my Chinese reading log, and feel free to reach out by email if you want any difficulty ratings.

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