三國演義
Originally it was written in about 300 A.D, but it got a new version in the 1600's.
The weird thing about this book is that a war is fought in every chapter, its nothing but fighting, and more fighting.
I think the Illustrations in this book are funny, yes, they were made a thousand years ago, but... every character just looks the same:
Romance of the 3 Kingdoms, is a Chinese classic fairy tale, but based on true events.
I bought this book because of the video games, both the Strategy and the Dynasty Warriors games,that I played along time ago.
The book starts out by introducing the main characters, first we see the story of how Liu Bei (玄徳) , Guan Yu(關羽), Zhang Fei(张飞)
became blood brothers, promising to never be divided. In the notes section of the book it states that Guan(關羽) and Zhang fei(张飞) had to slaughter their wife's before becoming loyal to each other.
""Though not born on the same day of the same month in the same year, we hope to die so""
During the entire book Liu Bei(玄徳) is depicted as being a hero of china, he doesn't really much success in the first book, but later on will start taking things over.
玄徳
Lord Guan being a super strong warrior who kills anyone in his way and just being a really loyal person to his 2 brothers.
關羽
Zhang Fei on the other hand is pretty much a reckless drunk, who just gets in the way most of the time, he isn't as loyal as the other brothers either, because later on he would try to kill Guan because he got captured and was forced to serve their enemy Cao Cao. He is also a Sorcerer, having studied an old book, he could control the weather, but we don't see this used often.
张飞
Cao cao is I think the most important character in the book, followed by Liu Bei.
He is depicted as this evil and not evil character, his loyal servant once stated that he is sympathetic and excellent in conduct, though we see some nasty things from him like unforgiveness when he killed the begging Lü Bu, who was the strongest warrior in the world.
Next came Sun Jian, the relative of Sun Tzu the man who wrote the famous "Art of War", now he died pretty quickly in the book, but then was succeeded by his son Sun Ce, who was pretty mad and unfit to be a lord, he died quickly too, but not really in the heat of battle, he got an arrow shot through his neck, the arrowhead filled with poison, the doctor told him to rest for 100 days, he only rested for about 20, then he executed a sorcerer who later hunted him day and night until he went mad and died.
The two main goals of the first book is for Cao Cao to take over the current Emperor Yuan Shao (袁绍) and defeat Dong Zhuo.
Dong Zhuo (董卓) was a bastard, he killed many people, he was strong as hell, so many people tried to kill in person, but he was like the Kingping, all fat and strong. Nobody could really kill him, except a beautiful girl(貂蝉), whom Lü Bu(吕布), the worlds strongest man, was entitled to marry.
吕布
貂蝉
One day, her father asked her to start a big dispute between Dong Zhuo and Lu bu, who at the time was a loyal servant to Dong. She said that Lu Bu tried to beat her, an thus Dong took her as her own. On the other side of the Yellow river, was Bu, who was told that Dong defiled his girlfriend. He then hugged her, while Dong was spying on the 2 of them. Pissed off, Dong threw his spear but missed, hilarity ensued, Dong was much too fat to catch up with Lü Bu, so he went home.
Later Lü Bu would set up a trap and spear Dong in the throat.
After that, Lü Bu became a 1 man army, and started fights with everyone, Cao Cao, Liu Bei and his brothers, until eventually he was captured and beheaded by Cao Cao.
After a few skimishes with the remaining Dong Zhuo generals, it was time to attack Yuan Shao(袁绍), the current emperor.
袁绍
The man to do it was Cao Cao, who by now was a strong force in the entire china. After a few stupid plans by Yuan shao, he was felled by Cao cao, having admited defeat, he gave his succesion to his youngest son, not his eldest.
This started a brief rivalry between brothers which led to the downfall of the Yuan clan.
And this is where the First book ends.
