Zephyr believes in very little, but she believes in Ren. Zephyr decides to take matters into her own hands: she feigns defection to Miasma, using the prime ministress to take her to the allies Zephyr has always planned to secure for Ren. For awhile, it seems to have worked-but that dolt warrior Lotus botches things, and soon, it looks like Ren will be on the run again. When it looks as though all might be lost, Zephyr still has tricks up her sleeve: she sends Lotus, one of Ren’s swornsisters, to convince Miasma that their forces are much greater than the prime ministress expected. This complication is irksome to Rising Zephyr, to whom people are really just pieces on a game board peasants cannot appreciate her brilliance, after all. Ren, in all her noble intent, has insisted that her forces also shepherd the peasants who sheltered them to safety. The story opens in media res, with Ren’s forces fleeing from the larger imperial army led by Miasma. Which is why it’s so delightful that He draws on those tales here and then makes them entirely her own. But its core story-three friends who swear an oath to support each other through thick and thin, a strategist so gifted as to make it seem as if the weather obeys their whims, honorable warriors determined not to win by cheating, and an abundance of courtly intrigue despite those honorable attitudes-resonates well beyond its early origins. At 800,000 words and with a cast of thousands that would make Golden Age Hollywood proud, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is justifiably daunting to a modern audience. While the stories are incredibly familiar to Chinese readers, they’re less well-known to American audiences. Joan He’s Strike the Zither is her reinvention of the epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a historical fiction saga credited to Luo Guanzhong. If this description sounds almost familiar, it should.

Rising Zephyr, one of the most brilliant strategists in all of Xin, has filled that position-and is determined to lead Ren to victory. In order to combat superior, well-supplied forces, Ren needs a master strategist, someone who will join her cause. War has come to the Xin Empire, and the noble warlordess Xin Ren leads a small force to oppose Miasma, the prime ministress who claims to be the will of Ren’s cousin, the empress.

Joan he