Re: (WFC) The River Judge (Water Outlaws) by S L Huang

On 4 Jan 2025 22:20:13 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

>
The River Judge  (Water Outlaws) by S L Huang

>
So, I read this based on Mr. Nicholl's review, and I found it disappointing.
I felt like I was missing out on some of the basic story, so I read the
original Water Outlaws book.
>
The original book in the series is sort of a satire and adaptation of the
classic Chinese novel Water Margin, in much of the way that Bridge of Birds
is an adaptation of Journey to the West.  However, genders are reversed and
it is a woman martial arts instructor who is driven from her position by
an unjust official and is forced to join a band of female renegades and
revolutionaries in lands far from the capital.
>
I liked the original book and I'd recommend it but so far the other books
in the series have just seemed strained to me.

If this is consistently the case (Mr. Nicholl's reviews encourage you
to read it, and it disappoints) then that makes a very valuable
resource: you can safely ignore any book he reviews and the review
encourages you to read it.

I did this with a movie reviewer I called "The Chick Flick Reviewer".
If she liked a film then, whatever else it was, it was a chick flick.
If she didn't like then, whatever else it was, it was not.

Thus, she liked /Cars/ -- which is a chick flick (a romance). She
disliked /Cars 2/ -- which is not (it is exactly what the trailer
promises -- a James Bond film set in the world of Cars, no romance
involved).

She was /very/ reliable.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"