Legends of Heroes in Troubled Times

In 184 AD, Zhang Jue of Julu cried, "The Azure Heaven is dead; the Yellow Heaven shall rise," and the old house of the Han dynasty, which had stood for four hundred years, began to leak in a torrential downpour. Over the next century, the Yellow Turbans blazed, Dong Zhuo burned Luoyang, and the battles of Guandu and Red Cliffs raged. Heroes rose up, and the realm changed hands three times.

This is neither a retelling of Romance of the Three Kingdoms nor a lecture on Records of the Three Kingdoms. In the plainspoken, witty style of Mingyue Dangnian, it lays bare the schemes of emperors and ministers; with the weighty prose of Er Yue He, it captures the struggle between power and human nature.

No one here is a simple caricature: Cao Cao is both a capable minister and a cunning warlord; Liu Bei is resolute and decisive; Zhou Yu is magnanimous and refined; Zhang Fei respects the scholar-officials; and Zhuge Liang is a statesman, not a sorcerer. And here, too, are the truths: it was Sun Jian who slew Hua Xiong over warm wine, and the tale of borrowing arrows with straw boats remains intact, though its secret is quietly revealed.

Nine volumes, more than ninety chapters, and over two million characters. Major events are anchored in the official histories, while the details belong to the novel. This is an epic of the warlords, and a tale of every person caught in a time of chaos.