The Water Outlaws

by S. L. Huang

Hardcover, 496 pages

English language

Published June 19, 2023 by Tor.com.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-18042-1

(4 reviews)

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 …

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

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

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

2 editions

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

The story sounds pretty cool but I'm just not into the writing.

No rating

Looks like it could be a fascinating story in the mode of Ken Liu's "silkpunk" stories and R.F. Kuang's Poppy War trilogy (the author of which whose name was mangled with S.L. Huang's in the Hugo controversy "report", I just thought that was hilarious), but as with the a previous work by this author I found the prose too herky jerky, long stretches of action with some dialogue but it doesn't really convey atmosphere and character to me, reads more like a screenplay, so I set it aside after the first chapter.

Leia reviewed The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

A Good Adaptation of Wuxia

5 stars

...As far as I can tell. I watch a lot of kung fu movies, but I know little about actual Chinese history/lore. Still, worth the read and I found it easier to get through than the Legends of the Condor Heroes.

Tak! reviewed The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

The Water Outlaws

4 stars

Content warning I don't have anything interesting to say without spoilers

This could have been titled The Radicalization of Lin Chong.

One thing that was striking to me was how almost all of the actors self-identified as working for the good of The Empire, but for some of them that meant the people in the Empire, and for others that meant this idealized abstract structure.

I appreciate that Lin's superhuman abilities were created/"unlocked" by a random experience she had, rather than heredity/Chosen One/etc.

heavyboots reviewed The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang

Action and adventure in ancient China

4 stars

A mostly female, partially LGBTQ cast (on the hero side anyway) sees a former arms instructor in ancient China join a bandit camp in the vein of Robin Hood. Quite a fun read! Much adventure and swashbuckling as well as fighting for justice from oppression, sexual assault, classism etc.