Where to begin with The Beauty’s Blade: Mei Ren Jian, the first Baihe licensed by Seven Seas? This is not a rhetorical qestion, as many readers picking this up might not be all that familiar with the tropes of the Wuxia genre. The book itself gently suggests that, if you are unfamiliar with Wuxia, Chinese “historical” fantasies about martial arts heroes, whose arcane practice and studies of martial art using inner energy – qi – have given them almost magic skills – that beginning with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,  streaming on  Apple TV, for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime) which was a gateway for many into Wuxia. The word itself is relatively-ish new, and while old kung-fu flicks used some of the same tropes, Wuxia has developed along a separate path from martial arts movies.  (Xianxia is a related genre that deals with immortal heroes and there can be overlap as a lot of the “cultivator” – i.e. “qi cultivator” – stuff can feed into the martial stuff.)

To a very great extent, Feng Ren Zuo Shu’s The Beauty’s Blade (美人剑 [Měi Rén Jiàn]) assumes a certain knowledge of Wuxia in the reading audience. Ideally, you know about the wire-work that allows those warriors who use qingong to fly through the air, or at least leap so far that its much the same. You’ll understand that qi can be used not just offensively, as a kind of energy discharged through a weapon or by hand, sometimes even by eyes and, in significantly over-powered characters through mere will, it can be used defensively by hardening or warming or healing the body. I have trained qigong exercises named “golden bell” and “warming the triple burner” to develop those specific skills. Sadly, I am still soft flesh and blood and often cold. I guess I never trained hard enough.^_^;  All joking aside, the martial art I practice is an “internal” art that would be exactly the kind of thing the warriors in this novel work on. Of course, their powers are hyperbolic and sometimes hilarious.

I don’t follow specific fandoms much and haven’t paid attention to Baihe as much as it deserves. I will say that The Beauty’s Blade reminded me a great deal of The Untamed, a (50-episode! I deserved a medal for watching all of it!)  danmei (m/m) Wuxia story on Netflix in specific structural ways. Chapters here are terse, it often feels as if we were supposed to understand what is going on, although the characters just show up, then have a lot of expository conversation to explain what is going on. I imagine that keeping track of the various houses might not be easy for folks unused to the genre. Visually, Wuxia stories help you along with different colors for different houses/sects and you can see that a little here.  We are told repeatedly that the Diancang Sect wears blue, for instance.

If a reader is not comfortable with the sects or the family names, it might feel much like reading a Russian epic. It’s not *that* complicated if you just remember the three main groups: The Lightpath Alliance, the Jadewater Guild, aka the demonic guild, and the Weiyang Company. Regardless of which group, basically everyone is a complete asshole, so forget “light” and “demonic” as meaningful markers. ^_^

To make this more complicated for western audiences, scenes sort of happen. There’s no lead up, or phase out. We’re in a place, the scene happens. Next chapter, repeat.  The Untamed did that a lot – I assumed it was stuff cut out from the novels, but now I am not so sure. Maybe the serialization of these novels make for choppy story telling. But, by the end of the story, you can at least put it all together, so that was good. 

Because most scenes were presented with no open or close, and no specific weight – almost every scene is full of shouting, cursing, fighting, leering and a bit of exposition. It can all feel very the same, with the exception of Fu Wangqing and Yu Shengyan’s scenes together which break up the rest of the scenes, but also feel much the same as a whole. There is a distinct sense of this being written in the style of or for a short form serialized live-action adaptation.

Many times the overdramatic martial arts come off as plain funny, but my favorite line comes at the very end of the book, after Fu Wangqing injures a man who tries to force his way into her room. Yu Shengyan asks her who it was and Wangqing says “Whoever has a cut on their right hand, duh.” Fu Wangqing was so often incredibly childish and wholly capricious, this suited her perfectly. 

Also, despite the fact that both Gu Yu and Guo Ju are utterly ridiculous in origin and execution, I liked them anyway and were glad for the one-line resolution to both their convoluted stories. Although I would have preferred if the Zhong brothers ended up among the many corpses in the story, they were vile.

I have read only a little Baihe, and what I have read sounds much the same as Yu’s translation, so I will call that satisfactory as far as it goes.   Overall, I cannot say The Beauty’s Blade: Mei Ren Jian is a “good” book in terms of skill of character building or writing, but I found it highly entertaining for 381 pages of Wuxia fun that I would pay good money to see turned into a live-action series. ^_^

Ratings: 

Art – 7 Both covers are quite nice, the interior art by Gravity Dusty gets the point across and thankfully never bothers to illustrate any of the shouty men, only the shouty woman. ^_^

Story – 7 Convoluted, full of shouting, but it eventually made sense and all the lesbian couples live happily ever after.

Character – 8 Fu Wanqing was all over the place, Yu Shengyan had almost no personality, but that was the point.

Service – yeah, a little

Yuri/Baihe – 10

Overall – 7

The Beauty’s Blade: Mei Ren Jian would make a fun gift for the Wuxia fan in your life, especially if they watch danmei for the inevitable one warrior woman character. ^_^