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The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Barry Hughart Kaja Foglio 9780966543605 Books

Download As PDF : The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Barry Hughart Kaja Foglio 9780966543605 Books

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Barry Hughart Kaja Foglio 9780966543605 Books

Reclusive author Barry Hughart wrote a trilogy of 'Master Li' fantasies, and as far as I can determine, never published anything else. But what a trilogy this is! The first installment, "Bridge of Birds" was co-winner (with Robert Holdstock's "Mythago Wood") of the 1994 World Fantasy Award, and also won the 1986 Mythopoeic Award. The final two books in the 'Master Li' trilogy are "The Story of the Stone," and "Eight Skilled Gentlemen."

This fantasy of an ancient China that (alas) never was could almost have been written by Patricia McKillip, except for the dollops of raucous humor that spice up the shining fairy tale. But the beauty and wonder of McKillip's fantasies are here, as viewed through the smoke of an opium dream.

Here are the two main characters in their own words:

"My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father's sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox."

"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character," says the drunken old man who, seventy-eight years past "had been awarded first place among all the scholars of China."

(In the first draft of "Bridge of Birds," Master Li was nineteen years old, and Number Ten Ox only made a brief appearance as a village idiot!)

This unlikely pair sets out to rescue a village of children who lie in poisoned comas brought about by the greedy village pawnbrokers, Fang and Ma the Grub.

Master Li and Number Ten Ox learn that they must find the Great Root of Power (the Mother of All Ginseng) in order to save the children, but as with all quests, there are many obstacles along the way, including murderous monks, a bandit called Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang, and an ex-Imperial concubine called The Ancestress, who poisoned the emperor and bankrupted the empire "by decreeing that every leaf that fell in her imperial pleasure garden must be replaced by an artificial leaf fashioned from the costliest silk." But they are all minor villains compared to the tiger-masked, immortal Duke of Ch'in. He is so evil he manages to upset the balance of Heaven, which Master Li and Number Ten Ox must restore before they can save poisoned children.

This might sound like a complicated plot, but your imagination will be so happily reveling in the exotic settings, the oddball characters, and the stories within stories, that it will seem like you're skimming through this book, as easily as Master Li and Number Ten Ox skim across the ancient Chinese landscape (that never was) in their Bamboo Dragonfly.

"The Story of the Stone" has been described as "an oriental Holmes and Watson plunked down in an Indiana Jones movie." Pretty decent summary, actually, although I'd also throw a little Puccini into the mix (the author is incredibly hard on his heroines), along with Dante Alighieri. The ancient ("Ah, if I were only ninety again...") Master Li and his faithful sidekick and beast of burden, Number Ten Ox set out to investigate the brutal death of a monk in the Valley of Sorrows in this second volume of Hughart's fantasy trilogy.

The monk appears to have died of fright in the monastery library, a scrap of forged manuscript clutched in his hand, and a very unmonkish dinner of thousand-year-old eggs and other expensive delicacies in his belly (Master Li performs an autopsy that would make Dr. G. proud).

The chief suspect is the infamous Laughing Prince. Unfortunately (actually, fortunately for the peasants whom he murdered in droves) the sadistic prince has been dead for over 700 years. Master Li and Number Ten Ox descend into the tomb of the evil prince, along with his painterly descendent, Prince Liu Pao where they find jade-encased mummies, mad Monks of Mirth, a water slide that wouldn't be out of place at Disney World, and of course, treasure and torture chambers. The one thing they don't find is the corpse of the Laughing Prince.

At least, not right away.

Master Li must call upon his friends, old, new, dead, immortal, and immoral to solve the mystery of the Laughing Prince and the Stone of Immortality. You will meet characters in this book who are to be found nowhere else in fiction, including the beautiful Moon Boy who sings and buggers his way through the ten principal Hells and the great Wheel of Reincarnation, acting as a sort of Virgil to Master Li's Dante.

The plot is complicated, but the characters and the mythical scenery of an ancient China that never was make "The Story of the Stone" a fantasy to read and reread in those dark hours when you don't think you can stand another page of the noble Frodo. Plus Barbarian readers like myself who have only a "rudimentary concept of Hell" will be exposed to the two most incredible fallacies of our educational system: "that Hell is reserved for the damned, and that the world is flat."

The execrable villain, Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu (who appeared in Book 2, "The Story of the Stone") is on the execution block at the beginning of "Eight Skilled Gentlemen." The executioner, who is going for the record in cleanly-performed beheadings by sword, botches this particular job for a very peculiar reason--a vampire ghoul crashes into the crowd around the execution block in pursuit of a band of frightened soldiers.

This is just the beginning of a bizarre monster-fest (in case you were wondering who the eight skilled gentlemen were.) These are demons like you've never seen before. For instance, the first demon-deity "resembles a three-year-old child with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair, and it kills by forcing its victims to strangle themselves."

Luckily Master Li happens upon Number Ten Ox before he finishes choking himself to death.

The plot is quite complicated, but the exotic settings and oddball characters kept this reader mightily entertained. In addition to the 'Eight Skilled Gentlemen,' there is a very old, partially deaf Celestial Master and saint who has some of the best lines in the book: at the funeral of a demon-slain high muckety-muck minister of state, he glares at a row of tight-lipped mandarins, and shouts, "Damn fools!...If you'd given Ma's corpse an enema you could have buried what remained in a walnut shell!"

Chinese saints seem to be much more opinionated and interesting than their European counterparts.

Master Li and Number Ten Ox join up with a puppeteer and his beautiful daughter to break up a ring of mandarin smugglers who are using mysterious cages to communicate with one another. The story finally resolves itself in a wild end-of-the-world dragon boat race that pits our two heroes against the gods.

I only wish Barry Hughart had continued on with this eccentric and wonderful myth of old China.


Tags : The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox [Barry Hughart, Kaja Foglio] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 2008 compilation of three of Barry Hughart's novels: Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen.,Barry Hughart, Kaja Foglio,The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox,The Stars of Our Destinaton,0966543602

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox Barry Hughart Kaja Foglio 9780966543605 Books Reviews

Set in a China that never was, author Hughart's trilogy is intricate, amusing, exciting and wonderful. So if you like Leverage or Dortmunder or Ocean’s 11 or maybe even Lies of Locke Lomora; or if you like Neil Gaiman or the Harold Shea stories; or if you like Sean Russell’s Initiate Brother or the Five Chinese Brothers then you should have a look at Bridge of Birds, the first book in the trilogy. Bridge of Birds (in particular) is structured in the "successive revelations" form, like Buck Godot Gallimaufry or the first Amber series. You learn something, and then you learn something more that puts the first thing into a new context, and you repeat until dramatic climax. This is a form that really works for me, and it takes a lot of work on the author's part to pull off, since each step must not be predictable except in hindsight.

It is superlative at what it does. There are elements that are somewhat problematic these days (some male gaze and sexism), but I do not hesitate to recommend the book.
This anthology of Hughart's three celebrated fantasy novels about "an ancient China that never was" is a lot of fun. If you love Chinese folklore and myth, fast-paced mysteries, slapstick comedy, thrilling chases, graphic violence, occasionally charming aphorisms, brilliant sarcasm, then this series will delight you. The first two books, "Bridge of Birds" and "The Story of the Stone," are fantastic, while the third book, "Eight Skilled Gentlemen," falls slightly below the high mark set by the earlier books, but is still inspired. The two main characters, master Li Kao and his client/associate Number Ten Ox, are vivid and memorable, but Hughart doesn't spend much time developing characters (the books fail to create a single interesting female character, as several reviewers have noted). These books are all about inventive plotting and narrative voice. Hughart seems to have been inspired by the droll Kai Lung novels of Ernest Bramah published more than a century ago, but Hughart's series weds Bramah's ingenious concept with contemporary prose and detective story conventions. Although Hughart originally planned seven novels featuring Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, the third book was published 25 years ago. Perhaps three is enough.
as a person that has over the past 30 years or so read 3-5 books per week, i can definitely place this group of books in my top 5. mind you, that's out of somewhere between 4600 and 7800 books over the years. action, adventure, philosophy, crime solving, humor...these books have everything! i have no idea if the author was slightly insane when he wrote this stuff, nor do i care. it's just a great story. if one day the august personage of jade ever asks one of his deputies to grant me one wish upon my return to the wheel of life, it would be to know the author in his next life, for as surely as the sun rises in the east, he will no doubt be a personage of great value to the heavens and a saint that will be granted his own star.

li kao, who has a slight flaw in his character, is an awesome crime solver, and number ten ox is smarter than he appears. the characters they meet along their path to greatness fill in parts of the story that you can't imagine, in ways that that no one can guess until their true nature is revealed.

these three books remind me of "journey to the west", but they are told in a more modern way and easier to understand. i think that to compare them to the first real book ever written and praise them in that aspect, is the greatest compliment i could ever give to the author. buy them, and buy them now. you will not regret it.
Reclusive author Barry Hughart wrote a trilogy of 'Master Li' fantasies, and as far as I can determine, never published anything else. But what a trilogy this is! The first installment, "Bridge of Birds" was co-winner (with Robert Holdstock's "Mythago Wood") of the 1994 World Fantasy Award, and also won the 1986 Mythopoeic Award. The final two books in the 'Master Li' trilogy are "The Story of the Stone," and "Eight Skilled Gentlemen."

This fantasy of an ancient China that (alas) never was could almost have been written by Patricia McKillip, except for the dollops of raucous humor that spice up the shining fairy tale. But the beauty and wonder of McKillip's fantasies are here, as viewed through the smoke of an opium dream.

Here are the two main characters in their own words

"My family is quite undistinguished, and since I am the tenth of my father's sons and rather strong I am usually referred to as Number Ten Ox."

"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character," says the drunken old man who, seventy-eight years past "had been awarded first place among all the scholars of China."

(In the first draft of "Bridge of Birds," Master Li was nineteen years old, and Number Ten Ox only made a brief appearance as a village idiot!)

This unlikely pair sets out to rescue a village of children who lie in poisoned comas brought about by the greedy village pawnbrokers, Fang and Ma the Grub.

Master Li and Number Ten Ox learn that they must find the Great Root of Power (the Mother of All Ginseng) in order to save the children, but as with all quests, there are many obstacles along the way, including murderous monks, a bandit called Cut-Off-Their-Balls Wang, and an ex-Imperial concubine called The Ancestress, who poisoned the emperor and bankrupted the empire "by decreeing that every leaf that fell in her imperial pleasure garden must be replaced by an artificial leaf fashioned from the costliest silk." But they are all minor villains compared to the tiger-masked, immortal Duke of Ch'in. He is so evil he manages to upset the balance of Heaven, which Master Li and Number Ten Ox must restore before they can save poisoned children.

This might sound like a complicated plot, but your imagination will be so happily reveling in the exotic settings, the oddball characters, and the stories within stories, that it will seem like you're skimming through this book, as easily as Master Li and Number Ten Ox skim across the ancient Chinese landscape (that never was) in their Bamboo Dragonfly.

"The Story of the Stone" has been described as "an oriental Holmes and Watson plunked down in an Indiana Jones movie." Pretty decent summary, actually, although I'd also throw a little Puccini into the mix (the author is incredibly hard on his heroines), along with Dante Alighieri. The ancient ("Ah, if I were only ninety again...") Master Li and his faithful sidekick and beast of burden, Number Ten Ox set out to investigate the brutal death of a monk in the Valley of Sorrows in this second volume of Hughart's fantasy trilogy.

The monk appears to have died of fright in the monastery library, a scrap of forged manuscript clutched in his hand, and a very unmonkish dinner of thousand-year-old eggs and other expensive delicacies in his belly (Master Li performs an autopsy that would make Dr. G. proud).

The chief suspect is the infamous Laughing Prince. Unfortunately (actually, fortunately for the peasants whom he murdered in droves) the sadistic prince has been dead for over 700 years. Master Li and Number Ten Ox descend into the tomb of the evil prince, along with his painterly descendent, Prince Liu Pao where they find jade-encased mummies, mad Monks of Mirth, a water slide that wouldn't be out of place at Disney World, and of course, treasure and torture chambers. The one thing they don't find is the corpse of the Laughing Prince.

At least, not right away.

Master Li must call upon his friends, old, new, dead, immortal, and immoral to solve the mystery of the Laughing Prince and the Stone of Immortality. You will meet characters in this book who are to be found nowhere else in fiction, including the beautiful Moon Boy who sings and buggers his way through the ten principal Hells and the great Wheel of Reincarnation, acting as a sort of Virgil to Master Li's Dante.

The plot is complicated, but the characters and the mythical scenery of an ancient China that never was make "The Story of the Stone" a fantasy to read and reread in those dark hours when you don't think you can stand another page of the noble Frodo. Plus Barbarian readers like myself who have only a "rudimentary concept of Hell" will be exposed to the two most incredible fallacies of our educational system "that Hell is reserved for the damned, and that the world is flat."

The execrable villain, Sixth Degree Hosteler Tu (who appeared in Book 2, "The Story of the Stone") is on the execution block at the beginning of "Eight Skilled Gentlemen." The executioner, who is going for the record in cleanly-performed beheadings by sword, botches this particular job for a very peculiar reason--a vampire ghoul crashes into the crowd around the execution block in pursuit of a band of frightened soldiers.

This is just the beginning of a bizarre monster-fest (in case you were wondering who the eight skilled gentlemen were.) These are demons like you've never seen before. For instance, the first demon-deity "resembles a three-year-old child with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair, and it kills by forcing its victims to strangle themselves."

Luckily Master Li happens upon Number Ten Ox before he finishes choking himself to death.

The plot is quite complicated, but the exotic settings and oddball characters kept this reader mightily entertained. In addition to the 'Eight Skilled Gentlemen,' there is a very old, partially deaf Celestial Master and saint who has some of the best lines in the book at the funeral of a demon-slain high muckety-muck minister of state, he glares at a row of tight-lipped mandarins, and shouts, "Damn fools!...If you'd given Ma's corpse an enema you could have buried what remained in a walnut shell!"

Chinese saints seem to be much more opinionated and interesting than their European counterparts.

Master Li and Number Ten Ox join up with a puppeteer and his beautiful daughter to break up a ring of mandarin smugglers who are using mysterious cages to communicate with one another. The story finally resolves itself in a wild end-of-the-world dragon boat race that pits our two heroes against the gods.

I only wish Barry Hughart had continued on with this eccentric and wonderful myth of old China.