The first volume of Jin Yong’s Return of the Condor Heroes has been released in paperback and ebook editions. It should now be available wherever you buy your books. (EDIT: It seems paperback versions are currently only available from UK booksellers. Try Blackwells.) Translated by Gigi Chang, Return of the Condor Heroes is a direct sequel to Legend of the Condor Heroes and is a fan favorite. This is just volume 1 of as planned four volumes, so if the release schedule is the same as it was for LOCH then it will be another three years before the novel is completely translated. For those new to these novels, do note that Return of the Condor Heroes is one novel being split into four parts for practical reasons. It’s not a series, so do not expect any kind of resolution at the end of this volume.

I think I will be sitting this one out. I was not a fan of the previous translation and don’t really want to spend money now on something that will just raise my blood pressure. I’m trying to mellow out. But those who don’t have strong opinions about how wuxia should be translated will likely have no problem with this one. Certainly if you liked the Legend of the Condor Heroes translation then you will like this one as well. One huge advantage of this new translation is that it utilizes proper English grammar, so it’s a smoother, easier read than the fan translation (I did check out the available reading sample on Amazon).

One notable difference between this new official translation and the fan translation is that the official translation is presumably based on the 3rd edition (I assume this since their LOCH translation was) while the fan translation is based on the 2nd edition. The major difference is how the main antagonist is dealt with at the end of the novel. I’m not sure of the other differences, but nothing too drastic anyway.

So you all have fun with this one. Someone let me know how it translates Xiaolongnü.

Speaking of Jin Yong, yesterday I checked out a couple books about Mount Qingcheng for research I’m doing for an article about the major martial arts schools in wuxia, and both of them happened to have a random picture of Jin Yong. The first book is a martial arts manual《青城太極》(Qingcheng Taiji) by Liu Suibin 劉綏濱, the 36th generation secthead of the Qingcheng School (yes, there is a real Qingcheng martial arts school. The second book is《青城山道茶》(Qingcheng Mountain Tea) about a variety of tea grown on the mountain. Apparently Jin Yong visited the mountain in 2004 and these pictures were taken then. I haven’t seen these pictures of Jin Yong before, so I’m sharing them here.

While I have you, let me recommend a couple wuxia games I’ve been playing recently: Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion and Wandering Sword. They are both available on Steam (see the links just posted). They are both turn-based tactical combat. Both of these are good games.

Wandering Sword’s combat is a lot of fun, though the story leaves a bit to be desired in terms of the writing, and it feels like there’s a lot of cut content that didn’t make it into the final game, as if the release was rushed a bit. The dev team is still actively updating it.

Hero’s Adventure in my opinion is way better. More freedom: you can be a bad guy if you want, you can join whatever sect you want, you can charge in and fight or sneak around or use your eloquence to talk your way into or out of situations. There’s a lot to do and it has a better jianghu experience in my opinion. That is, it feels like you’re roaming the jianghu, running into new characters and adventures all the time. Because it has no “main quest” since you can choose to do whatever you want, it has a lot of replayability. But for completionists, you will have to do multiple playthroughs to experience everything and get all the achievements. This game is still in Early Access, but frankly, it’s more polished and complete than Wandering Sword.

That said, Wandering Sword is a good game and I do recommend it. It’s English translation is better at the moment, though they both are translated. But if you can only pick one for now, I’d go with Hero’s Adventure. I hope to review both in more detail later.