Three Kingdoms, Vol. 6: Blood and Honor

The Legends From China series comic and text version of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the four great classics of Chinese literature, is a masterpiece of (relatively) simple storytelling, with great visuals. The only confusing point at times is the similarity in appearance of the many, many burly and bearded ancient warriors we are following, mainly because there are so many of them and most of them are quite invincible. But after a while the maze of characters starts to become clearer, and it's easy to become immersed in this amazing tale.Each book of about 170 pages is broken up into three or four individual tales, or adventures, mostly following our three heroes - Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei - as they go about their sworn mission, but also breaking away from time to time to tell someone else's tale (usually someone that's doomed to failure or death). Each section begins with an overview of what's to come (i.e. forecasting and spoilers), a map of the vicinity of China that is covered, as well as the odd box tale or illustration of a hero or two. Curiously, the text follows a western convention of family name last, inverting names like Liu Bei as "Bei Liu" (Liu is the family name), seemingly pretending that English convention is to do the same with all Chinese names, like Zedong Mao (Mao is the family name), or Kai Shek Chiang (Chiang is the family name, etc). Oh well...The sixth part of the story builds on the fifth (of course), which was about retaliation and murder, but also about mind games and machination. This one is dominated by battle, starting out with Guan Yu's choice as an isolated warrior, fighting one one-eyed general after another, being reunited with an old ally, enjoying drinking battles with his temporary allies, kung fu practice, some idealism... Cao Cao contemplates Guan Yu's character, as Guan Yu fights for Cao Cao against Yuan Shao (temporary ally/hostage of Liu Bei) at the Battle of BaiMa. There's the strange honour of military advisors, before we get into bloody battles and fighting with Guan Yu - and it's quite bloody!! There's a push to the frontier, and we get towards... volume seven!!