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The Water Outlaws

By: S.L. Huang
Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
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Summary

A 2023 Pick for Vulture Men's Health, IGN, Polygon, Goodreads, Nerd Daily, WeAreBookishBook, Riot, The Mary Sue & others

Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They're also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

"Reimagining the famed Chinese novel Water Margin, this epic wuxia fantasy will blow you away. . . . Huang's dynamic prose and animated action will keep you hooked 'til the very last page." Rosie Knight, IGN

©2023 S. L. Huang (P)2023 Dreamscape Media
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ+
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Great adventure.

It’s a great adventure story. The choice and the slight change in the retelling of the original story explains the Hugo controversy.
For an action/adventure fantasy novel the plot is serious, choices realistic and characters are complex. It’s a book told from a female protagonist perspective where it’s not just the usual supposition of huge muscles with huge breasts, so prevalent in the genre. It’s psychologically compelling.
The enormous emphasis author puts on gender themes in her marketing is totally irrelevant to the story unless someone wants to focus on it for reasons other than the book itself.

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