One of my favorite historical fantasy / thriller / mystery novels of all time is Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was. I read it when it first came out in 1984, and almost immediately went right down to my local bookstore and ordered it (no Amazon then, folks!) in hardcover.
Why my love of this book? For one thing, the pace never slackens, the cultural and historical references are impeccable, there are enough twists and turns in the plot to make almost any modern thriller look really unsurprising, and there are characters that you will never forget. It's chock full of Chinese mythology, fairy tales, and history. And best of all, it is so witty and hilarious that, no matter what happens, you can't help but laugh at least once a page, and often more. But then I have, like one of the two heroes, Li Kao, "a slight flaw in my character."
The narrator, Number Ten Ox, the tenth son of a peasant family, is without guile, but willingly does what Master Li tells him to, from (after an exhausting, grueling, and hard first quest) relaxing in the bedroom of the concubine of the town miser (Miser Shen), to killing... well, quite a few villains.
Ten Ox is the one who tracks down Master Li when all the children of the village of Ku-Fu between the ages 8-13 fall into a coma plague, thanks to the two pawnbrokers of the village (Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub) who have decided to get and keep ALL the money in the village by poisoning the mulberry leaves so all the silk worms die. The pawnbrokers fake their own deaths, and we meet them again and again and again... (as in real life, so in fiction.) One of my favorites is when the pawnbrokers go forth with "his mother's ashes", and on the road, they spot the cow.
"Mother!" he screeched. "My beloved mother has been reborn as a cow!".. The cow's eyes were streaming with tears of joy as she lovingly licked the bald fellow's skull. "Mother! What joy to see you again!" he sobbed, kissing her hairy legs. What choice did the farmer have? ... He was only a gentleman farmer, and he was quite surprised when he was informed that cows always weep when they lick salt...
"Lies, all lies!" screamed Pawnbroker Fang.
"We demand compensation for slander!" howled Ma the Grub.
Or Doctor Death:
We walked through the open door into a room that was littered with carcasses, and where a little old man with a bloodstained beard was attempting to install a pig's heart into a man's cadaver while cauldrons burped and kettles bubbled and seething vials emitted green and yellow vapors.
Doctor Death sprinkled the heart with purple powder and made mystical signs with his hands. "Beat!" he commanded. Nothing happened so he tried yellow powder. "Beat, beat, beat!" He tried blue powder. "Ten thousand curses why won't you beat?" he yelled and then he turned around. "Who you?" asked Doctor Death.
"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao and there is a slight flaw in my character, and this is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox."
"Well, my surname is Lo and my personal name is Chan, and I am rapidly losing patience with a corpse that absolutely refuses to be resurrected!"
Doctor Death is trying, desperately, to resurrect his late wife. "Don't worry, my love, I'll have you out of that coffin in no time!" He is also a wonderful source for the Elixir of Life, which will surely allow you to live forever, unless, of course you get the distressing side effects, so it's best to try it first on a cat, a crow or a cow... Just in case... It fells an elephant in 20 seconds.
Then there's Henpecked Ho, the unfortunate husband of the Ancestress' daughter, and who one day has finally had enough of living with a mother-in-law who is a 500 pound genocidal maniac. Almost as ancient as Li Kao, the Ancestress, is still waiting for grandchildren and decides Number Ten Ox will be a good son-in-law. In her already prepared schoolroom for the grandkids is written:
HEAVEN PRODUCES MYRIADS OF THINGS TO NOURISH MAN;
MAN NEVER DOES ONE GOOD TO RECOMPENSE HEAVEN.
KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!
And she lives by what she preaches. Until one day, thanks to Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, Henpecked Ho realizes that an axe can be an excellent relative remover. When he dies, successful, his last words are
"Immortality is for the Gods. I wonder how they can stand it."
Of course, there is a major villain in the piece, the Duke of Chi'in, a thinly disguised Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210 BC) whose empire barely survived three years after his death. He left a holocaust of victims behind him and a mausoleum that (in real life) is the source of the famous terracotta warriors. And in the novel... well, his one and only punishment is death.
The Duke of Ch'in has an Assessor (the ultimate tax man), Key Rabbit, who is married to a peasant girl, Lotus Cloud, who has "fallen victim to insatiable greed." Every man who meets her falls in love with her except for Li Kao, who again explains "I have a slight flaw in my character."
There's a fairy tale about the Star Shepherd and Jade Pearl, the Chinese version of Psyche and Eros, and Jade Pearl's mentor and guardian, the Queen of Ginseng.
There's the story of how a stretch of the Great Wall called the Dragon's Pillow was built 122 miles away from the rest of the Great Wall, on orders of the Ruler of Heaven, the August Personage of Jade, who delivered the plans in a dream to the builder. And of Wan the soldier, buried in the Dragon's Pillow to guard it for all eternity from his lonely watch on the Dragon's Tower.
There's the… oh, there are so many stories... and they all intertwine and mingle.
Jade plate,
six, eight.
Fire that burns hot,
Night that is not,
Fire that burns cold,
First silver, then gold.
And the ending is a knockout, that rises for a whole chapter in a glorious symphony in words and images, and mixes, somehow, laughter with wet eyes, and is totally satisfying. That is rare.
The beautiful Bridge of Birds was climbing slowly toward the stars, and a great song was spreading across China. Faster and faster we sped through the sky, and on the ground below the peasants were running from cottages and lifting little children in their arms to gaze at glory.
"You see?" said the peasants. "That is why you must never give up, no matter how bad things may seem. Anything is possible in China!"
Indeed it is in Bridge of Birds.
