Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre Vol I By Louis Cha/Jin Yong and Wing Shing Ma

Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre Vol I

By Louis Cha/Jin Yong and Wing Shing Ma

Louis Cha who used the pen name Jin Yong was born in 1924 in Haining, Zhejiang in the Republic of China. He was born with the name of Zha Liangyong of the Zha clan of Haining and could claim a number of known scholars and poets in his ancestry. An avid reader of wuxia and classical Chinese literature even as a young man he got into conflict with the authorities to the point of being expelled from school for denouncing the Nationalist Government as autocratic. Despite this, he would graduate high school in 1943. In the early 50s, his father was arrested by the Communist government in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries and put to death (he would be declared innocent in the 1980s... posthumously). Mr. Cha found himself in then-British-ruled Hong Kong working for the New Evening Post as a deputy editor. There he started working on his first novel in 1955 and quit his job to work as a scriptwriter and scenarist director for Great Wall Movies Enterprises Lt and Phoenix Film Company. In 1959, he founded the newspaper Ming Pao and served as its editor in chief, at the same time writing serialized novels and editorials to the tune of 10,000 Chinese characters a day. Which frankly makes me light headed just thinking of it. Mr. Cha would write 15 novels that are to this day wildly popular in the Chinese speaking world; they have been made into movies, tv shows, radio dramas, and graphic novels. Louis Cha would pass away in October of 2018 and has been compared to JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin and JK Rowling for his influence on Chinese fiction in general and wuxia specifically (as for what wuxia is, all I'm gonna say is we are going to get into that later this year, stay tuned!)

In fact, the subject of this review is a graphic novel. The novel of Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre (for the record I'm told this is a mistranslation and it should be Heavenly relying Sword but Heaven Sword is catchier so we're sticking with that) which was adapted into this graphic novel by Wing Shing Ma, a Hong Kong artist born in 1961. He quit school in 1975 to focus on his art and well, it paid off. Wing Shing Ma is known for series such as Chinese Hero, Two Extremes, and Black Leopard. He would release this in the late 1990s with the English translations being released in the early 2000s.

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre is actually the third part of the trilogy but stands well enough on its own that you can follow the story without needing to read the prior two books. Which is good because I haven't. I grabbed this one because it was mistakenly labeled as a stand-alone and I didn't do enough prior research. The novel is set in a fantasy version of China where martial art training can unlock a person's inner power (or Chi as it commonly referred to) allowing them to do fantastical feats that aren't physically possible. Which is a good thing for our main characters because they're going to need every feat they can pull. Let's talk about them a bit.

Jay Shan is the Fifth Brother of the Wu-Tang Clan (no, not that one) a martial arts school founded by a man who achieved a spiritual awakening and taught his insights to seven students. It's on their master's 90th birthday when they discover their 3rd brother has been wounded horribly perhaps even to the point of death. With few clues and fewer options, the brothers of the Wu-Tang Clan split up to search for what happened to their Third Brother and why. Jay Shan quickly finds himself wrapped up in a series of events that center around the Dragon Sabre, a legendary sword that can cut stone and steel as if they were paper and if the wielder can unlock the swords secrets, they can rule the world. His lead into this story is Sue Ying, the daughter of the leader of the Sky Eagle Clan. Ying is an interesting figure in her own right; as Shan finds her by tracking the back trail of his injured brother and finding out that someone had hired a group of bodyguards to bring him to the Wu-Tang Clan's stronghold after he had been injured but had murdered that group when they failed. That was Sue, who also murdered a pair of monks for trying to stop her but not before getting tagged with a trio of poisoned needles. Oh, she also did all that while disguised as Shan; so now everyone thinks he's a maniacal monk-murderer. What really caught my attention here was the fact that she was dying of poison, with Shan wanting to heal her but she refuses on the grounds that Shan needs to apologize for scolding her for committing cold-blooded murder and admit she was right to do so. I've seen some gutsy power moves in my day but this is a new one. I don't think I've run into ‘I won't let you save my life until you validate my life choices and apologize for doubting me’ before. Especially pulling that with someone you basically framed for your crimes? I'm flat out impressed. She's gonna need that gall and audacity to deal with their antagonist though.

Zhune Shai, who rejoices in the title of King of Gold Lion, is a man of singular purpose. Many years ago, his master who goes by Vigor Fist of Kun betrayed him and killed Shai's entire family. As is entirely expected of you in a wuxia story (or most fantasy stories honestly, to be fair blood feuds and cycles of revenge are simply what happens in societies without effective law enforcement or government) Shai embarked on a quest of revenge to kill his old master and if he has to make a mountain of bodies to get to his old master, well so much the worse for everyone else then. I've always found the wild disregard for innocent bystanders somewhat interesting in a way. Since it was someone else slaughtering an innocent that started it in the first place. You'd think at least one character would stop and go ‘No, killing unrelated 3rd parties whose only real sin is being in the wrong place and time literally makes me just as bad or worst than the person I am trying to avenge myself on’, but they don’t. Shai, however, does have that pointed out to him by a Monk on his first rampage, who tries to extract a promise from Shai to stop the killing on the grounds that while what Vigor Fist of Kun did was terrible and wrong, we have to start somewhere in putting an end to blood feuds and murder. So while Shai does try to limit his bloody vengeance, he's perfectly happy to look for a reason to kill someone if it's convenient for him. Given that this is a wuxia story in fantasy China, there's a lot of terrible people to kill. Shai's goal is to hunt down the legendary Dragon Sabre, which is the one thing that might give him the edge over his master and allow to finally reap his vengeance.  He also wants to make sure there are no witnesses to him getting ahold of the Dragon Sabre because learning how to use such a weapon takes time and he'd rather that Vigor Fist didn't come looking for him before he was ready.  I kinda like that since that's a touch of realism to the fantastic here.  A sword that can cut through anything is going be a little different in its use then a normal sword. Both Ying and Shan get dragged into this while trying to hammer out just what their relationship is and suddenly they have the pressure of not being murdered on top of that.  Despite that, they do work well together.

The first volume of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre is more of a prologue than an opening chapter but it's an interesting one. The story does show it's age in the translation and plot progression, however. Within pages, I could tell I was reading a story that was at least older than I was and while that doesn't bother me, a modern reader may want to keep that in mind. The art is really well done in a style that is colorful and detailed enough to keep the reader's interest. It makes a good tale for anyone who enjoys martial arts stories or just enjoys stories with larger than life colorful characters. That said, there is a pacing issue as the story is a bit in a hurry and could have used more time to establish the relationship between Jay Shan and Sue Ying.  There's also the fact that you rather keenly feel the fact that this is part of a larger story.  In it's defense, the graphic novel does manage to tell a complete story with a beginning, middle and end.  That said I'm giving Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Vol I by Louis Cha and Wing Shing Ma a B.

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