Sherwood Smith's Reviews > The Marten and the Scorpion

I'm tagging this as Chinese-history because wuxia tales have been around so long that a famous Chinese statesman snarked about they overused back in the first century B.C.

Wuxia, and xianxia, have been around for millennia, stamped out occasionally by this or that government, then reappearing in a form adapted to that particular cultural bend in the long, long river that is Chinese culture history. It's fascinating to watch how the evolution of such tales is a mirror reflecting cultural evolution.

The simplest definition of wuxia for Westerners is stories of chivalric wanderers who wander what they call the jiang hu, paying no attention to political boundaries, or the rigid hierarchy of imperial law. Some tales (xianxia) lean more toward the supernatural, involving a fascinating pantheon of gods, demons, mythological critters, and various types of humans, reflecting the substrate of the Buddhist cultivation toward enlightenment. Other tales are more ground-bound, basically martial arts stories that Westerners might define as picaresque, as Eastern and Western concepts of plot can vary pretty widely.

Anyway, these stories have been around a very long time, but until very recently, they flew entirely under the radar of Westerners as so very few have been translated. With the growing demand for more diversity in fiction, I've been delighted to discover Chinese writers writing in English, being translated into English, and conversely, Westerners discovering wuxia and xianxia tales and fashioning their own stories, blending Eastern and Western tropes and ideas.

Such is Robin Shortt's madly fast-paced, pungently vivid wuxia-influenced tale, The Marten and the Scorpion.

The Martens are a street gang in Samarkand. Darya is low on the totem pole, a pickpocket trying desperately to claw her way upward to the status of thief, as life at the bottom is even shorter and nastier than general life is in this city poised between two ancient civilizations. The Scorpion is a very, very enigmatic and powerful person who Darya really does not want to cross, but if she wants to survive, she is going to have to try to outwit . . .

And so we are introduced to a wildly colorful cast of characters as new dangers threaten Darya waking and sleeping.

If the reader wants one of those one-sentence tag lines, I'd say "If you like Leigh Bardugo's tales, you really should give this novel a try." But for me, the real fun of this breakneck paced story was discovering, along with Darya, the palimpsest of the jiang hu world--the world of the chivalric martial artist--overlying the real world of the Silk Road, bringing with it mysteries and even hints of magic.

Absolutely the only complaint I have (and it's really more of an observation) is that the author plumped for the Wade-Giles system of transliteration over Pinyn, but that was an informed choice, with reasons given at the end of the novel. I happen to find Pinyin easier.

That aside, I relished this novel from beginning to end, and I really hope that there will be more adventures with Darya and her friends.

copy provided by publisher