A Bond Undone is the second book in Jin Yong’s epic Chinese classic and phenomenon Legends of Condor Heroes, published in the US for the first time! In the Jin capital of Zhongdu, Guo Jing learns the truth of his father’s death and finds he is now betrothed, against his will, to two women. Neither of them is his sweetheart Lotus Huang. Torn between following his heart and fulfilling his filial … following his heart and fulfilling his filial duty, Guo Jing journeys through the country of his parents with Lotus, encountering mysterious martial heroes and becoming drawn into the struggle for the supreme martial text, the Nine Yin Manual. But his past is catching up with him. The widow of an evil man he accidentally killed as a child has tracked him down, intent on revenge.
Meanwhile, his true parentage at last revealed, Yang Kang, the young prince Guo Jing must face in the Garden of the Eight Drunken Immortals, is forced to choose his destiny. Will he continue to enjoy the life of wealth and privilege afforded to him by the invader of his homeland, or give up all he has known to avenge his parents?
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This series is my first foray into the fictional world of martial arts. A Bond Undone is the second in the Legends of the Condor Heroes series. I devoured the first action packed book (A Hero Born) of the series in a day and couldn’t wait to start the next.
While I still enjoyed the action in this one and found some of the kooky characters endearing, I found others just plain annoying and/or confounding. While the majority of the male characters in this series are conniving and narcissistic (which does occasionally get old), the one kind hearted character, Guo Jing, is consistently described as bring ‘stupid’ and ‘slow’. And bless his heart, he is! While most of the time I found him sweet and endearing, his gullibility and inability to follow what’s going on around him did get frustrating. However, it was the female characters that caused me the most frustration and anger. They’re either written as swooning…hmmm, nicest word? idiots! yes, they’re either swooning idiots that literally can’t/won’t live without their love or as 3 year olds in a grown woman’s body, temper tantrums and all. That definitely got old! As for the conniving men, they themselves didn’t bug me, after all, what would a fantasy series be without villains for the heroes to fight? It was that some of the female characters continually believed they were good, honorable men no matter how many times they did something slimy. However, all that said, I have to remind myself that this book was written in a very different time (1950’s), when women were little more than props to make men’s lives easier and were rarely given credit for having a brain.
Even with my frustration, over the female characters In particular, I still give this book four stars. Cha weaves history in with fantasy and very unique, fictional characters with real historical figures. The series begins in 1205 right before the Mongel conquest of China, so of course the Great Genghis Khan is one of those historical figures and definitely the most well known. I’ve always had a fascination with Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire, it was actually that part of the book’s summary that had me adding this to my TBR shelf. After reading it, I understand why Louis Cha (pen name Jin Yong) is often called China’s Tolkien. He is exceptionally talented at world building and his prose is so lyrical and poetic. This is the first time the series has been published in English as it was feared too much would be lost in translation for Westerners to be able to enjoy the beauty of it. So I have to give translator, GiGi Chang, credit too as she was able to capture that beauty. Those of us here in the U.S. have definitely been missing out. So, long review long (but finally ending): this is a great series and I can’t wait for the next two volumes! I won a copy of this book in a giveaway.
A BOND UNDONE
I have been looking forward to this read since I read the first book last year – A Hero Born from the Legends of the Condor Heroes series by what many has dubbed as the Chinese Lord of the Rings. This is the first time this has been translated to English since it first publication in 1959. The translation from Gigi Chang is truly impeccable and flows beautifully into the English language, and made for a great reading experience for me. Thank you for the explanations which helped in furthering my understanding and enjoyment of the story.
This second book continued right where the first book ended as Guo Jing is to be married but not to his beloved, Lotus Huang just as he learns the truth of his father’s death. Just like the first book, tis story continues to be filled with action pack fighting wuxia style – with fancy names for the moves, which I truly enjoyed reading about as well as the cultural idiosyncrasies. Guo Jing is a character I really loved as well as the romantic element with Lotus Huang.
I had fun reading this installment and look forward to next books in this epic adventure.
I liked this book. I thought that this book was more enjoyable than book one of this series. To start the story picks up seamlessly from the ending of the previous book which was nice. I’m not always a fan of time skips. I felt that this book more engaging and it held my attention better. Maybe this was because I felt that emotion played a much bigger part in this entry of the series or that the plot became more complex but whatever the case, this really worked for me. I also felt that the book was easier to get into and just overall felt less clunky to reading which I thought was a really big problem in the first book. Do not get me wrong, it is far from perfect but I thought it was better and consider that this is a translated book, I feel a bit of slack is deserved. Things do kind of start slowly but like a rock rolling down hill things do pick up and you will find yourself immersed in this tale of revenge, secrets, love, honor adventure, action, loyalty and morality.