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Title details for The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin - Available

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

by Tom Lin
Feodor Chin
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

A Chinese American assassin sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife and exact revenge on her abductors in this New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice: a twist on the classic western from "an astonishing new voice" (Jonathan Lethem).

Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad.

Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale.

Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.

"In Tom Lin's novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy's West, or that of the Coen Brothers' True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. Yet The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu has a velocity and perspective all its own, and is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream." —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

Finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 1, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781549132292
      • File size: 277597 KB
      • Duration: 09:38:19

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 12, 2021
      Lin’s disappointing debut opens in post-Civil War Utah, where the title character has just killed Judah Ambrose, a former labor recruiter for the Central Pacific Railroad. Ambrose was one of four men on Ming’s hit list, and it gradually emerges that Ming and his white wife, Ada, eloped years ago after her businessman father objected to their relationship. But after just two months, her father arranged to have Ming beaten and charged with miscegenation; his punishment was a decade of hard labor laying rails for the Central Pacific in the desert. Ming is now searching for Ada, whom he believes is in California, and the men who mistreated him. At one point, he hooks up with a circus troupe whose company includes people with magical powers, but this supernatural twist adds little. Evocative prose makes up only in part for a predictable revenge plotline and stock characters. Those with a taste for gory westerns may be satisfied. Agent: Lisa Queen, Queen Literary Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Feodor Chin beautifully performs this revenge story set in the postCivil War American West. Ming Tsu, born in America and orphaned at birth, was raised by a California crime boss who taught him how to survive in a violent world. After Ming is forcibly recruited by the Union Pacific Railroad as a manual laborer, he escapes, determined to track down every man who tore him away from his white wife. He partners with a blind mystic and falls in with a traveling carnival of misfits who seem to perform genuine miracles. Chin delivers on all fronts: capturing the lyrical flow of the text, voicing authentic-sounding accents, building the mystery and tension, and projecting Ming's contrasting feelings of passion and rage. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      January 1, 2021

      The orphaned son of Chinese immigrants, Ming Tsu is raised by the leader of a California crime syndicate and later elopes with Ada, the daughter of a railroad magnate. When the magnate's henchmen kidnap Ada and put Ming to work on the Union Pacific Railroad, he's out for revenge. An intriguing debut billed as a thriller, a romance, a Chinese American-inflected Western, and an 1860s-set redemption story with Cormac McCarthy overtones.

      Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from May 1, 2021
      Somewhere in Utah, 1869. By his reckoning, Ming Tsu has killed some 200 men and is now on his way to killing five more, the five who had beaten him half to death, stolen his wife, and had him sentenced to 10 years of forced labor building the Central Pacific Railroad. Two years later, Ming has escaped and is ready for retribution and to reclaim his wife. Soon he is joined by the blind, ancient ("older than time") Prophet, who, like Ming, is Chinese and who will be his guide, both physical and spiritual. En route to revenge, Ming hooks up with a traveling miracle show featuring Proteus, a shape-shifter; the boy Hunter, who is deaf and mute but has the uncanny ability to project his voice into men's minds; and Hazel, the fireproof woman with whom he falls in love. Ming is hired as the show's guide and protector on its way to Reno, where Ming will leave them, and, with three of the five dead, he and the Prophet will head across the Sierra Nevada to California and his fateful encounter with the final two. Infused with magic realism, Lin's beautifully imagined first novel is an extraordinary epic with page-turning, often cinematic action that transcends the parameters of genre fiction. A brilliant debut, impossible to put down.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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