Throwback Thursday: Bridge of Birds Unbalances You in the Best Way

To save the children of the village of Ku-fu, all of them afflicted by a strange illness, an innocent young man named Number Ten Ox (so called for his birth order and great strength) employs a wily 100-year-old private investigator (and former con artist) named “Master Li” Kao to help him find the cure: the rare Root of Power. As the two grift, fight, and banter their way across ancient China on their quest, they must escape deadly labyrinths, overcome terrifying monsters, sword-dance with a ghost, match wits with two grotesque villains, and possibly even write the happy ending to a long-lost folktale.
That’s the bones of it. But around the time Master Li enters the story, the book takes a literal turn down a dark alley and flips from a lyrical tone steeped in myth to something that resembles an ancient Chinese collision between Sherlock Holmes and The Princess Bride. Once Li leaps on Ox’s back, it’s like the entire book plants its tongue firmly in its cheek: the dialogue scenes become faster-paced and trend toward anachronism, the jokes fly as fast and furious as the heroes’ fists, the plot wheels spin faster, and the characters even lean on the fourth wall at points. The ancient texts that are supposed to guide them on their way turn out to be incomplete and full of vagaries. The episodic structure frequently fling itself headlong into physical comedy, and the minor villains and characters pop back up so often that the heroes encountering people they’ve already conned becomes a running gag.

Somehow, amid all this lighthearted wackiness, Hughart finds patches of darkness. Indeed, things get disturbingly dark at times; there’s a stark contrast between the wickedly funny parts, and the parts that are just plain wicked. The book seems to pull a misdirect at times, poking fun at tropes here and there, only to suddenly play something perfectly, painfully straight, or describe a grisly act of violence in detail. It’s a striking effect, to suddenly have that buoyant cloud of comic fantasy drop out from under you—to be hit with sequences of profound emotion, just when you’ve lowered your defenses. Bridge of Birds wants you to feel everything alongside the characters, good and ill. It wants to scare you, surprise you, make you laugh, and make you cry.
That’s it’s strength. Any book can have awesome moments, but by toying around with the tropes, this one makes sure the most awesome moments are ones you’ll never see coming. Any book can attempt to tug at your heartstrings, but by constantly shifting its tone, this one will make you cheer at every victory, sink with every defeat, burst out laughing, and recoil at the terror. It trades on surprise and trips up your expectations. It never takes the short and easy path when a more winding, convoluted one will make for a more interesting journey. And even when you return to it again and again, it remains one hell of a trip.
Bridge of Birds is followed by two standalone sequels, The Story of Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. All three are available digitally in The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox.