A Hero Born: The Definitive Edition

A enjoyable adventure. The story moves through locales and sets up the struggle of good and evil. The translation is sometimes awkward in context for some passages but that is normal for translated texts. It is still very fluid and consumable. The fight scenes are littered with elaborate moves, all given elaborate names (as they are the fighting style for a specific family), and are descriptive and imaginative. As a lover of old Kung-fu movies from the 70s and 80s, this book felt familiar. Some of the scenes of characters gliding through the air or performing acrobatic moves with grace and ease as they engage, chase or meet clearly reflect that “Kung-Fu” movie style I am used to seeing. The encounters follow, what I could imagine in my mind visually in the kung-fu movie style, and the events all lead to the epic showdown. Since this is the first of a series, I am curious to see how this epic moves on. I was attracted to it because it was described as the “Chinese Lord of the Rings”. Indeed it is epic in nature and the host of characters is grand. The supernatural aspects are there and you really want to root for the hero. This is a great beach read or afternoon trek for those who need a little classic kung-fu and high spirited adventure. I saw there is a subtitled series that is available. I may have to check it out to see how they presented this story in an episodic format. Cheers!

When I first heard about the publication of the English translation of this book and such translation is the first of its kind, I was shocked. I never bothered to check if there were English versions out there because I used to read them in Chinese for at least a dozen times. How could this happen? I am glad this classic can finally reach the western readers. The original book was written more than fifty years ago. So the English version is too late, but not too little.Disregarding Chairman Mao's Little Red Book that every Chinese had to own several copies for obvious reasons and thus was published a trillion times in China, it is no doubt that Jin Yong's fifteen martial arts novels are the number one selling books for the last half century in China. It is a rarity to find a Chinese who has never read Jin Yong or watched a movie/TV series adapted from his books. I personally grew up with it, and Jin Yong's martial arts literature has become a common part of the Chinese consciousness and psyche.The Condor Heroes are the first installment of the fifteen stories penned by Jin Yong, and is probably the most widely circulated among the fifteen. That's why I call it the foundational piece of the modern martial arts literature. Without it, there would be no Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, no Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, or no Kung Fu Panda. Without it, several generations of Chinese would suffer a huge deficit of literary imagination.Jin Yong, like J R Tolkien or J K Rowling, are grand masters of building otherworldly worlds filled with mesmerizing plots and characters. I still remember the days when I begged my classmates in elementary school to borrow and have the Condor Heroes just for one night, and I burned the midnight oil literally because there was no electricity in the early 1980s. Those nights were the happiest reading days of my life. When I started working and received my first paycheck, one of the things in my priority list was to buy and own Jin Yong's full-set books.I took one star off because of the translation. I have great sympathy for the translator because many concepts in Jin Yong's world is so Chinese. For instance, "nine yin skeleton claw" just does not sound terrorizing as the Chinese original. Still the translator did a admirable and quality job.

I was introduced Jin Rong and Hero Born as a Chinese language class in Beijing and then was offered a review copy by St Martins. Fate brought the book to me.Early in the introduction is is said that the whole series extends over some 12 books, which was almost enough to make me put the volume down. But, I did not. Set in China at the end of the Sung Dynasty, about 1300 CE, we enter a chaotic political period with nomadic tribes pressing the Sung and the Sung fighting for its life. But, even the defenders of the Sung are not united as we learn in A Hero Born, broken down into different schools of martial arts. All of which seem easy to take offense and fight for perceived honor. In short, scarcely a page goes by without some display of martial arts.A Hero Born is adventure on a grand scale. While the fight scenes seem to come on every page, Cha's canvas is wider than a simple fight. The action spans most of China and into the nomadic lands. Comparison to The Three Musketeers or Cooper's Leatherstocking series seem a better match for scale and breadth.Louis Cha (Jin Rong) is a foremost writer of martial arts novels. It is wonderful to have access to his work in English. As for me, I am ready for the next 11 books in the series.

I love this book. It’s a wonderful hero/ adventure story, full of excitement and intrigue, all while being supported by an enormous depth of influence from many ancient Chinese arts: martial arts, medicine, poetry, philosophy, and more. A marvelous celebration of Chinese culture in the form of a captivating and heartfelt story.Great start to the series. I’m enormously grateful that Jin Yong/ Louis Cha’s stories are finally getting translated into English. I really hope they keep coming. I already have book 4, of this series, pre-ordered.The one hesitation I had was in reading was the description of the martial arts moves. Eventually it occurred to me that it really wasn’t important if I knew what the move “flying mountain” or “the sword of mutual demise” actually looked like. It would surprise me very much if many Chinese readers, save those well versed in Kung Fu, would know what the moves were. I just consider them poetic descriptions, which they obviously are, and enjoy them on that level.

For many reviewers, the main problem of this translation was the strange decision to translate some (but not all) of the names, which I fully agree with - imagine translating 'Peter' into another language as 'rock', or 'George' as 'farmer'! Every Chinese-speaking reader I know was immediately turned off by this decision. But it gets worse. I carefully read this translation alongside the original Chinese, and it is riddled with misunderstandings and sometimes even missing passages. Only Chinese speakers will notice this. The vast majority of media reviews of this translation were by people who do not read Chinese, so this serious issue has not been flagged up.A more subjective complaint I have is that the translator also fails to provide proper introduction to the novel's historical and geographical context. This book's introduction is only three pages long. There is no help for the reader who wants to go beyond the translation to know more about Jin Yong or the novel itself. It is very easy for someone not already familiar with the novel to get lost, and the later volumes, when they are released, will only get trickier.The translator's prose reads fairly fluidly and engagingly, which is why I give it another star. But I as a Chinese speaker (who is familiar with the original novel) feel that it has too many flaws of style and accuracy to recommend. To be honest, it feels like a surface-deep translation, which might be fine for other authors but not Jin Yong. So I would instead recommend that enthusiasts stick to the online fan translation for now, which is a little less readable but more accurate.

Imagine being told the plot of a really complex kung fu movie by an eleven year old boy who's a bit too into Kung Fu. And then he attacks her with Black Dragon Gathers Water and she defends with Moonrise over River Fog then she counterattacks with Entering the Tiger Cave and he deflects her with Sleepy Badger. He was surprised by Sleepy Badger as it is usually only used by Masters of the northern sects, but her accent was clearly from the marshlands of the South.... and so onCumulatively it builds into a bizarre kind of poetry, which I adored. However it ends with a cliffhanger and the next translation isn't out until 2019...

This is a translation of a bit of pulp fiction from the 50s. It has lots of martial arts in it - everyone is always marvelling at each other's kung fu. The fight scenes all feature named moves, countered by other named moves - and all the moves have super poetic titles.The story is fairly rambling and episodic - what used to be called picaresque. The boy hero heads north, ends up being raised in Genghis Khan's family. There are rivalries that are sure to return on a grander scale in later books, and some weird competition in which two rival kung fu masters each train a child and they will fight when they turn adults - that's how they know who is the best. The story started to head off in another direction toward the end with some big surprises that I won't spoil.I have to say I am reading it while keeping up with the long, multi-part TV series from a few years ago. The TV version seems fairly faithful and has amazing cinematography. I can recommend both book and film!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for a digital edition via NetGalley of ‘A Hero Born: the Definitive Edition’ by Jin Yong in exchange for an honest review. It was published in September.This is the first volume in the Chinese classic ‘The Legends of the Condor Heroes’. It was translated by Anna Holmwood.While I enjoy experiencing world literature and was excited to read this historical fantasy, I soon found myself struggling. I read 75% before throwing in the towel as I found that I wasn’t enjoying it at all.I found the matter-of-fact style of writing just didn’t engage my interest in the story or characters and the endless fights just began to meld into one another. So many decapitations!I am sure this novel and the series will appeal to some readers, just not me.

I finished reading this in two daysA brilliant book for a British Born Chinese. I can speak Chinese and watched many Chinese martial arts TV shows buy can't read enough Chinese to read a story so this is amazingI like the literal translations of the names as I have a a better understanding of what it is in Chinese