Customer Reviews

Adventures of Monkey King

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I was a teenager, the BBC aired a dubbed version of the PRC's television version of "Journey to the West", and ever since, I have loved the story of the Monkey King. Being unable to find that series on DVD (or VHS, for that matter), I decided to buy this book to read to my son.

The book does an excellent job of introducing the character of the Monkey King, and tells the portions of the story that it covers well, and on a level comprehensible to children. It is hugely abridged, however, and ends only partway through the original story, with no attempts to tie up loose ends.

As a result, my son wasn't really satisfied with the open-ended plot, and there also weren't enough of the little subplots with the interesting secondary characters to make the book as memorable as it really should be. The book would have been a solid 4 or maybe 5 stars if it had just gone on a bit longer, either to bring the story to something resembling a conclusion, or to explain why there wasn't such an ending in a way as accessible to children as the rest of the book was. Incomplete as it is, though, I can't recommend it that strongly.

This is a very readable version of the monkey king classic. The sentences are short and simple, written in standard American English. The book is packed with action and is lots of fun to read.

The character of monkey is rather naughty, like Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.

The pictures have a definite Western slant to them, which is rather amusing.

This book contains much violent material and may not be suitable for children. Monkey King, an impulsive supernatural being on a quest for some Buddhist Sutra texts, thinks nothing of killing whole groups of people on a single occasion. Here's a quote: "Why would I want to eat a baby? It's not even a time of famine."