The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.8
An astounding debut that reimagines the classic Western through the eyes of a Chinese American assassin on a quest to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact his revenge on her abductors. "In Tom Lin's novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy's West, or that of the Coen Brothers' True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. A story full of archetypal echoes, yet with a velocity and perspective all its own, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream." --Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn Orphaned as a boy, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Union Pacific Railroad. Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a clairvoyant old man known only as the Prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed him, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming fights his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale. Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.
Reviews with the most likes.
Inventive and fast-paced, with touches of unearthliness. Really liked the ending. The journey that Ming Tsu takes is so vivid in my mind, having done the drive from California to Utah and back several times, and that made it all the more interesting to me.
What a banger. I loved it. The writing was excellent. The magical realism induced the perfect level of weirdness into the revenge plot. The characters were pretty flat but fit super well. And an old-school western was so much fun to read.
I also thought it did a solid job breaking up a whitewashed Western genre with its MC and the sequences in the book while still following genre conventions. I read the book feeling like it was a Western even though it was breaking the stereotypes of the genre. It reminded me of something Neil Gaiman said where genre fiction is defined by what people would be disappointed if a book did not do. In that regard, this book did a great job both hitting the feeling of a western and subverting its norms.
I also was reading through some reviews that basically said it was a ‘missed opportunity' to dive into some of the Chinese heritage and stories of the railroad. I can see that but I subscribe to the idea that stories just exist and we have personal relations with them. Its not on the author to write a story for an agenda. Thats not on them.
Besides the cover is dope.
