Yellow Sky Revolt

Preface: I will never review a book with this particular circumstance ever again. I will not be brief. Without a doubt, I am biased with this book. What circumstance, you ask? Well, Baptiste Pinson Wu happened to write a novel set during the Three Kingdoms era, following minor character Liao Hua as he retroactively narrates his life story, starting with his illustrious boyhood as a Yellow Turban as the beginning of a ten book series...which sounds pretty similar to what I've been working on for years, which is a TK ten book series following Liao Hua as he retroactively narrates his life story, starting with his illustrious boyhood...

Okay, you see why I am biased. To be clear, I'm biased positively -though it needs not be said, this is obviously just coincidence, if a shocking one. Honestly, I'm just happy someone else decided to finish all the dang research and actually get the book done. I wanted to write it myself because I was confident in how good of an idea it was - Three Kingdoms is one of the coolest eras of history, relatively unknown to western audiences, with a text format nonexistent except for the original dry Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which I unabashedly love, but is not very accessible to the average audience), Liao Hua is the perfect main character - rogue backstory, survives to the very end of the Three Kingdoms era, is a devout follower of the most famous figure of this era, and his youth is vague enough that you can do almost anything with him - he's the Forest Gump of third century China.

So I was absolutely beside myself when I learned about Yellow Sky Revolt, and preordered it instantly. I heard that Wu was inspired by the Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell and modelled Liao Hua after Uhtred (son of Uhtred), which, to make coincidences even grander, is the exact character I was also basing my Liao Hua on. Get out of my brain, Baptiste! (Okay, one final coincidence- I swear most of the book is different from mine, but we both also have extremely minor character Cheng Yuanzhi play a father figure to young Liao Hua. Okay, “Baptiste is a dirty rotten mind thief” section of this review is over). All is to say, this book was working at a five star, absolute banger level from page one. There was almost no way I wasn't going to at least really like it. It feels like it was written for me. However, it is a debut novel and it definitely has some things it could improve. So I will try to be balanced: There are things that totally worked for me that I can see not working for someone else, but on the flip side, I've spent so long thinking about this book (and beyond that: this era, which I have been enamored with for 23 years) that there are things I think may be the less interesting way to go, but that's only due to my closeness to the material.

Regardless, the highlight is this - This book is good, and it deserves more attention. The research is extremely well done, and it felt very much like Three Kingdoms Era China to me, which is the highest compliment I can give it.

So, YSR starts with a frame narrative - think of a mixture between Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles, in which the main character Derfal is telling his life journey to someone who wants to know “the real story” (in this case, it's Chen Shou - the man we have to thank that we largely know any of this), combined with Uhtred's sense of worldweariness and snark that the world he was fighting for has been lost and he's the last one left that remembers it (okay so this is Derfal too, but trust me, Liao feels more like Uhtred). Liao Hua thinks way back to 184 AD, when he was 7 years old and the Yellow Turban Rebellion began, which was the spark that would lead to a hundred years of civil war.

Here is the first thing that I'm unsure where my feelings truly lie - it's just barely possible for Liao Hua to have been in his early teens during this time, which would give him the ability to make more active choices during these formative years. As it stands, the entire novel takes place when Hua is very young, and because of that, it's a LOT of older characters telling him what's happening, telling him where to go, telling him what to do, telling him what's going to happen...there's a lot of telling. For what it's worth, knowing the history and where this book ends, I think he will be much more active in upcoming books. But it could definitely hamper someone's reading experience, depending on the person (but I shall point out that the excellent Assassin's Apprentice has Fitz as a six year old for most of it, so anything is possible). Hua, named Dun at this point in his life, lives in a small village near Wan as his “Uncle Cheng” (CHENG YUANZHI GET HYPED Y'ALL HE APPEARS ON ONE PAGE OF ROTK BUT HIS NAME IS COOL OKAY) begins to get him interested in The Way, which is a rebellious sect led by Zhang Jue.

One thing Wu excels at is the little stuff. The way the common folk view these big events or interact with the government, the way poverty impacts a community, religious faith, and interactions with the officials all felt like I was reading ROTK but more casual-like. He's also really good at character voice - I had a consistent view of Hua throughout, both as the narrator and as child Dun. I think the prose does veer a bit into phrasing that feels too modern sometimes though, particularly with insults. I can't recall the exact words, but there were several turns of phrases while insulting someone where the language used was jarring. But overall, the prose is straightforward and flows well, and for a debut novel, I was impressed.

This book is separated into two halves. The first half deals with Hua on the march with the Yellow Turbans, and the second half shifts almost completely, and I won't spoil the situation exactly, but its a bold strategy that is used to bring in several important TK characters as youths, before they go on to influence events. I had mixed feelings on this choice. On the one hand, I loved all the cameos and one in particular is going to have such a great payoff in like, book 8 or something. I also think having Forest Gump-I mean Liao Hua- meet all these important people early will make for a better story later on. On the other hand, it felt like the balance here was a little tilted in favor of people who were already familiar with TK. This section is littered with cameos that are almost intended to be like, “hey, remember Xu Chu? HE'S FAT” and I don't know how well this works as the second half of a debut novel, because the book has no real climax.

In fact, Wu had a clear destination in mind to end the book with, and there was a lot of relevant stuff happening far away from Hua before that could happen, so the end of this book has several pages of “and then this guy we've never met before did this thing to this other guy we've never met, which resulted in this third guy doing a thing...” and I don't know the right solve for this, except to somehow make Hua more directly involved or find out on a slower time frame, so I get that there's a lot of info-dumping that needs to happen. But it felt clunky. And I admit I have no understanding of how a newbie to TK would react to all the names in this book. Like, I don't think Lu Zhi, Zhu Jun, and Huangfu Song needed to be named at all. I think all three are cool, and I loved hearing about them, even for a moment. But they are name-dropped and then dismissed, never to return (most likely). I'm sure Wu is putting them in to be as accurate as possible and to please fans, but the analytical side of me wonders what the balance is between only introducing characters who have a narrative purpose and doing winks to a (probably large) chunk of your audience. He does try to signpost when a character will be important later, but I think this could be handled a bit smoother. Or, hell, maybe Lu Zhi is Wu's favorite TK character and he was determined to fit him in somewhere, and I absolutely understand that.

One last negative I have to mention is the lack of female characters. There are maybe four female named characters in this book, and three of them are very one-note, and the last one is slightly less one-note. This is a hard problem, but not an insurmountable one. I spent a lot of time myself figuring out how to integrate female characters into the narrative more prominently, and I hope Wu does too. Hua has plenty of time to meet compelling ladies. This didn't affect my reading experience at all, but I do know it would affect others', so I have to mention it.

This might be the longest review I've ever done, and I could definitely keep going, talking about each aspect of this book. I'm just so excited it exists, and so happy to have read it. This first book mostly steers clear of the really big Three Kingdoms figures- besides a couple. Cao Cao is around in all his glory, as are the three brothers and Sun Jian. I really like how Wu is able to spin certain characters from their ‘normal' depictions. Xiahou Dun in particular. I'm very hyped to continue to read and praise this series as Wu releases each of the following novels. However if Yu Jin and Zhang Liao don't get large roles, I'm going to get upset.

To finish up, an awesome debut historical fiction set in an era you should absolutely know more about, so buy this book and then read it and then say, “wow, Three Kingdoms is cool” to which I will say, “you're damn right it is.”

9/10