the order of pure moon reflected in water

Fung Cheong’s fellow bandit Tet Sang arrives soon thereafter, and tries to smooth things over, but by this point the coffeehouse is in shambles and Guet Imm has lost her job.

The story kicks off when the astonishingly good-looking bandit Lau Fung Cheong goes into a coffeehouse where Guet Imm is working as a server, and intervenes on her behalf (quite unnecessarily, as we will come to learn) when an irate customer accuses her of putting a jampi (spell) on him. Wuxia is traditionally not fantastical, however in this novella, one of the main characters, Guet Imm, is a votary of the Order of the Pure Moon, which is a religious order whose deity grants certain abilities that are beyond the ordinary. While wuxia is fascinating, I’m not sure that the genre would necessarily appeal to me, had it not been infused with Zen Cho’s addition of wonderful characters and sly dialogue, fantasy elements and queernormativity. (If you are interested in learning more about wuxia, check out “ What is Wuxia? A Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Kung-fu Novels, Movies, and TV Series” by Yong Kuan Leong, or the Wikipedia page on the genre.) It has many tropes and themes common to its genre, including a historical setting, a chivalrous philosophy, a wandering hero, and it sometimes also has elements of mystery or romance. Wuxia, for the uninitiated (like me), is “a genre of Chinese literature featuring the lives and adventures of Chinese martial artists” (Leong). In my ignorance, I had to look up exactly what wuxia is (and also went down a rabbit hole of pronunciation guides for Mandarin characters-an approximation of how to pronounce this word is “woo-she-ah”). The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a novella billed as “a found family wuxia fantasy that combines the vibrancy of old school martial arts movies with characters drawn from the margins of history” ( ). To sum up, it’s a long title for a short novel. My one complaint is that it was short, and I was sad when it ended (although the ending was perfection). And while I liked Sorcerer to the Crown okay, I truly loved The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water.

Much better than the generic Sorcerer to the Crown, which was the first book of Zen Cho’s that I read, on the recommendation of my friend and co-podcaster, Elisha. The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a win, IMHO. Some of my favourites are short, some are long, some are metaphorical or allegorical, some are literal. There is no rhyme or reason to my whims about book titles. If I hate it, well…I just might not read the book.

The order of pure moon reflected in water