3,5 stars. This was the first time I’ve read a Western, and I’m glad it has some magical realism mixed in because those are the parts I really enjoyed! I appreciate the diversity Lin brings to the genre with a Chinese American main character. If you like the action and details of any Western show or movie, this one’s for you!

I'm not into Westerns. They get recommended to me, but when "read a western" came up on a reading challenge a few years ago, I chose News of the World because it seemed like the least western of all westerns. But this book caught my attention because it's a "western through the eyes of a Chinese American assassin." Just those few words caught me and I had to read it. I'm glad I did.

I thought there would be a little more depth to this book but there wasn't much--it was just a western, which isn't my favorite genre. Most of the book goes like this: Ming kills someone, a person recognizes him, he has to kill that person too, he kills a horse, rinse and repeat. There were a few brief allusions to the treatment of Chinese rail workers and I think the book would have felt more complete if that was brought out a little more/his motivations for revenge and killing were more clear. I also would have liked to learn more about the prophet and see more depth in that character. Overall it was just incredibly predictable.

Wow, that was… a lot. I’ve never read anything quite like this — it felt very Tarantino-esque with its Wild West setting and gratuitous violence. While the writing style was really interesting and beautifully artistic, the plot just didn’t do it for me. I found the plot to be simple but unnecessarily long. I didn’t appreciate the way the main character was set up to be Chinese in a setting where this should have been a really interesting part to explore in terms of his identity, but instead the author seemingly refused to acknowledge any Chinese aspect of Ming. The ending was also predictable and unsatisfying.

Received a free copy from Netgalley.

Pub: June 1, 2021

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is a revisionist telling of a Western, told through the eyes of Ming Tsu, an orphaned Chinese immigrant who has been trained in the deadly art of assassination. I loved the unique take on the classic format and how it drew attention to the Chinese immigrant experience including enslavement working for the Central Pacific Railroad.

Then things got a little weird for me. Cue magic realism and things completely unexpected.

I loved the idea of the mash-up and breakdown of stereotypical genres and tropes but ultimately the combination wasn't a fit for me as a reader, though I know others have and will enjoy it!

Thank you to Little Brown, HBG and Netgalley for the gifted eARC to read and review.

a three star read for an uncompelling but fine western-fantastical novel, but the ending knocked it down to a two for me. disappointing.

A dark, revenge-filled journey through the American West but told through the viewpoint of a Chinese-American. A refreshing angle on an oft-told tale that while engulfing, it comes up short due to most of the characters coming off rather flat. If judged on the purely entertainment value, I think its a 5/5. Unfortunately, the writing itself won't win any awards, and I thought it would be trying to say a little more.

"The dying man writhed in agony and reaching out he grabbed the ringmaster's ankle weakly. The ringmaster jerked his foot away and kicked the man hard in the face, sending him rolling over on his side. He gave his cane a sharp twist and it came apart in his hand, revealing a hidden knife.

"A man is never without his arms," he said, and winked at Ming. "Something you surely must know better than I. But enough of these platitudes." With his boot the ringmaster rolled the moaning man back over onto his back. "I'll be taking those bills back," he said, and opened the man's throat with a quick swipe of his bladed cane.

The man gurgled a soft protest as he passed..."

----
So then. This writing is simultaneously excessively ornate and excessively blunt. It's a style that reminds me more than anything of "The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta" by John Rollin Ridge (1854), a book that everyone should read before they die. As in Ridge's novel, the story told in The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is overplotted and overblown, and yet, in its own way, somehow, deeply entertaining. This was a very fun read.

adult fiction - adventure/western, a US-born Chinese assassin plots his revenge as he journeys from Salt Lake City back to Sacramento, in the company of a blind "prophet" and a circus of people with magical abilities, set in the railroad-building days of Utah-Nevada-California, by a Chinese-American author who is local to Northern California.

I don't read a lot of westerns and would not have picked this up if this weren't a local POC author producing significant buzz, but I enjoyed this--lots of action scenes (watch out for that sharpened railroad spike) as well as a little romance, some characters with fantastic abilities, a bit of railroad history from the point of view of the "disposable" Chinese workers, and a whole lot of vengeance.

Loved the premise - Western with a Chinese-American protagonist who has a kill list. The writing was gorgeous but it just started to drag for me. The gore and violence started to feel gratuitous and I just got bored. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is a much-needed, refreshing, and poignant look at an unexplored side of the western genre. It has shades of Tarantino's Django Unchained. It features a man on a mission who must come to reckon with his past and retake the world that was taken from him.

My family has been collecting movie quotes for years. We use them as shorthand for all kinds of situations. (Keeping up with my family conversations requires a massive watching and reading list.) One of them, which my dad used to quote all the time, was on a constant loop in my brain as I read The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, by Tom Lin. Ming Tsu “is not a hard man to follow. He leaves dead folks wherever he goes.” This novel is a whirlwind of revenge across miles of blistering American desert and frozen mountain ranges as the titular character crosses off names on his hit list on his way back to the woman he loves.

The first chapters have all the makings of a classic revenge story: a wronged man, a path of violence, lots of baddies who are so bad you’d have to work really hard to empathize with them. But then things get weird. Somewhat surprisingly for a man blazing a road of violence, Ming Tsu begins to collect company. The first member is a Chinese man who can predict the future but who can’t remember anything. Then Ming Tsu is hired by a company of performers who can really do miracles. One member can change his shape. Another can speak without vocalizing a syllable. Yet another can go up in flames without burning. Even the road crew have gifts. I was fascinated by the mysterious company. To be honest, I wanted more of their story than I did of Ming Tsu’s.

From the perspective of the traveling company, Ming Tsu’s quest for vengeance hijacks their plan to travel around the west making money. Every town they stop in soon erupts into violence as Ming Tsu either finds another man on his list to kill or gets recognized by someone who saw his face on a bounty poster. I completely lost track of how many people Ming Tsu kills. The plot occasionally slows down to give us a glimpse of Ming Tsu’s past or as one of his companions tells him about there past, but this is not a book about self-reflection. It’s about racism and violence and loyalty, but not about changing one’s mind once it’s made up.

There are parts of The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu that I liked—mostly the traveling miracle show and the highly atmospheric descriptions of the Western desert—but it got lost in Western-genre shootouts. The way I see it, the Western genre is so moribund that any new stories in the genre must do something new. The supernatural elements helped but, like I’ve said, I wanted those elements to be more developed. The ethnically Chinese character also helped. This element is explored a lot more, albeit mostly in the form of a lot of anti-Chinese racism and language and Ming Tsu kicking racist ass across Utah and Nevada (if you can call that exploration). Readers looking for a spin on the classic Western revenge might enjoy this. Readers who want more substance to their gunfights should maybe mosey on down the line.

My thoughts are here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4083406945 and I reviewed this title for AudioFile Magazine.

With the atmosphere of the wild west as seen through the yes of a Chinese American assassin The author take the reader on a journey of revenge, killing, camaraderie and friendship as Ming Tsu travels across the west back to California. Orphaned at an early age, Ming was taken in and raised by a California crime boss who groomed him to be an assassin. Yearning for a different life, Ming fell in love and married a railroad magnates daughter. Her father and his gang of thugs broke into their house and kidnapped his wife, beat him up and had him sentenced to work on the Grand Central Railway. When Ming was able to escape the railroad gang he set out on a journey to kill all of the men who had helped his wife's father take her away. Along the way he meets up with a travlling show and escorts them all the way to Reno Killing the necessary men on his list as they move through the rugged territory.
It is the wild west from a different perspective. The descriptions of their travels and the terrain are stunning and clearly convey the hardships these people faced. There is the warm glow of friendships made and sadness of lives lost. This was a very enjoyable and enlightening read.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Little, Brown and Company for an advanced copy of this western novel.

The best way I could come up with to describe Tom Lin's first novel The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is since it is a western, touched with magical realism is to use movie terms. The story has a touch of Alejandro Jodorowky El Topo, as directed by Wong Kar-Wei with John Ford offering notes. This is no slam on Mr. Lin. The book is so well written, with descriptions that make everything, the desert, the ghost towns, the characters seem so alive and bright, even with the darkness that is the story surrounding them and compelling them forward. The story is revenge, and as revenge storys always go it does get very dark, and many graves, if anyone cared about these characters in their world to bury them will need to be dug.

Ming Tsu is done wrong, what he loves and the time he could have spent with her has been taken away. Instead of Randolph Scott or John Wayne in the lead, our main character is played instead by Chow Yun-fat, or Donnie Yen. His path to vengeance leads him to a blind prophet, who can see the future far better than he can see the present, and traveling companions from a carnival of sideshow denizens more magical than freakish. And violence. So much violence everywhere.

The characters are all interesting, all different and well developed, even the cannon fodder whose role in the story is to die, graphically and sometimes pointlessly. All of them have stories, that as a reader I wanted to know more about, and where their travels might take them, especially the carnival workers.

The book is not for all tastes. There is magic and wonder, mysteries and the mysterious that exist without explanation or reason. Sadness fills much of the book, it is easier to kill a stranger than to explain or reason with them. Orphans are made, some corrupted, some forgotten.

Since finishing this novel it has crossed my mind a lot. A line, a description, a Hey what ever happened to the carnival worker who could....The story keeps gong in my mind. I love when that happens, and I can't wait to read more from Tom Lin, no matter what he writes.

Tom Lin has penned a very interesting noir weird western. Ming Tsu is a wanted man out for revenge. Revenge on the men who stole his wife, arranged for him to be sentenced to work on the railroad laying track in the Sierra Nevada mountains for many years. Now he is free and crossing names off in his little black book. The weird western aspects emerges in the allies he gains and the strangeness he encounters. Not to give any details away, but magic of several different sorts are involved. If you like westerns or just a good tale of a bad man trying to accomplish one last goal, read The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu!

Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this book. Also thanks to the LJ Day of Dialog for the author panel participation!

weird-western, violence, retribution, Chinese-hero, assassins, magic, 1870s*****

Think a spaghetti western directed by Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton. It's been too long since I've read a novel of the Weird Western genre, but now I'm going to hope that I find some again. The plot is odd, the characters are almost believable (c'mon, if you can go with witches...), the violence is less graphic than crime fiction. It's all overlaid on the era of the building of the western railroads and the inequities among people. I liked it a lot!
I requested and received a temporary digital ARC of this book from Little, Brown and Company via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Little Brown and Net Galley for a copy of The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu; a debut novel by Tom Lin. I really stepped out of my comfort zone as a reader and I don't regret it one bit. This was a unique and refreshing read!

Ming Tsu is seeking revenge and is on a quest to find the woman he loves, Ada, who was taken from him. Ming is a cowboy and has lots of experience tracking down men and "getting the job done" so to speak. He's an assassin.. His plan is to kill the men who stole Ada. As he travels west, he meets a group of unique people from a traveling show. They join Ming and continue to travel west with him. Also on the journey is the Prophet. He has the ability to foresee when death will strike. He's a good person to have on your side. Not all of the group will complete the journey. Will Ming be reunited with his lost love Ada? And what will happen if and when he finds her?

This is a rare take on a Western.but it worked for me!

This one releases June 1, 2021

Tom Lin is an author to watch! This was a page-turning Western that encapsulated the hard living and harder dying for both man and beast in an era where exploitation, xenophobia, violence, and lawlessness thrived rampantly.

Ming Tsu is an experienced mercenary out for revenge; a man “out of bounds” on a mission to reclaim his stolen wife and kill the men who kidnapped her. I liked Ming immediately and readied myself for the arduous (and seemingly impossible) quest to begin -- hoping for the lovers to unite with a happy ending. However, there are quite a few people that need to be murdered with a lot of miles between them. Ming is focused and determined. He has a plan and like all trained assassins, he prepares his weapons and assembles his team. While he accidentally joins forces with a traveling troupe of misfit “miracle-workers,” each possessing supernatural talents, he purposefully seeks and recruits a blind mystic referred to as “The Prophet” who not only offers sage wisdom but uses his oracular abilities to guide the team Westward toward their individual destinies.

The inchoate landscape is depicted beautifully as well as man’s willful destruction of it for the sake of Westward expansion steeped in greed and the search for natural resources (silver, copper, gold, oil, etc). The brutally inhumane treatment, forced conscription, and blatant exploitation of Chinese railway laborers coupled with anti (Asian)-immigrant sentiments offer a peek into historical aspects not covered in textbooks. Recommended for those who enjoy redemptive sagas, Westerns with a touch of magical realism, and/or well-crafted suspense/thrillers.

Read if you: Want a rollicking, inventive, and shocking Western with a Chinese-American main character.

I'm not much for westerns, so take my review as you will! However--this sounded intriguing. There is some violence--it's a Western!--but it's not overly graphic.

The racism faced by Ming is both outward and subtle, from actual slurs to people refusing to call him by his real name.

I can see the ending being quite divisive and determining the reader's ultimate opinion of the book. It's quite tragic--this does not end happily.

Tom Lin is definitely an author to watch!

Many thanks to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.