Good news! We are happy to announce the arrival of the third book in our Last King of Shang series of graded readers. It covers the events in chapters 35 through 50 of the original epic Chinese novel Investiture of the Gods (封神榜 ). We have now covered half of the material in the original 100-chapter novel.
Here is a short blurb from the back cover:
In the waning days of the Shang dynasty in ancient China, an epic battle begins between forces loyal to the corrupt Shang king and the rebels of West Qi. The leader of the Shang army, Grand Tutor Wen, desperately recruits a host of demons, immortals and Daoist magicians to his side. They build ten magic traps to ensnare the West Qi rebels. But the legendary Jiang Ziya, aided by Nezha and the immortals of Mount Kunlun, use deception, magic and raw strength to disable the traps and lead a counterattack against the king’s forces.
The book uses a total vocabulary of 1300 Chinese words, same as the previous books in the series. In terms of reading difficulty, it’s roughly on a par with the last few 西游记 books. As before, there is a full glossary, and all new words are defined when they occur. And there is pinyin and English as usual.
Just as in the previous book, we’ve included all of the chapter poems, both in their original Chinese and also in a simplified-vocabulary version that, we hope, our readers can understand without much difficulty.
The book is now available on Amazon in paperback for $18.95, and as an ebook for $7.99. There is also, as usual, a free audiobook which will be available on YouTube soon, hopefully before end of the year.
