Any way, this week as promised, I read The Devil Wives Of Li Fong. Lets get to the review.
The Devil Wives Of Li Fong: by E. Hoffmann Price
The Cover:
The cover of this novel won me over at first sight. The generic vaguely Chinese-esque lettering of the title perfectly compliments the generic vaguely Chinese-esque cover art. This is a pretty old book and I know that America wasn't the most culturally sensitive place in the 1970's (when this book was published) but the cover of this book looks like what a teenager would draw if you asked him to illustrate what a typical day in China looked like. I don't know much about China or Chinese culture at all, but judging from the cover of this novel it is awesome. I do find it a little confusing that a novel called The Devil Wives Of Li Fong only has one female on the cover. Also the dragons on the cover look a little too western for my tastes. Aren't Chinese dragons those long snake-y looking dudes that you see tattooed on the lower backs of strippers? The dragons on the cover of this novel look like the King Arthur fighting kind of dragon, not the Chinese parade type. It might be a little hard to tell from the small sized image above but the woman on the cover seems to be packing quite a bit of junk in her proverbial trunk. This is especially noticeable when you compare the size of her waist to the width of her hind quarters. I think I know which piece of fried chicken the artist who painted this cover goes for. (hint: it's not the breast or the leg.... its the butt.)
This novel also has a pretty awesome Tagline; "No man could be happier than Li Fong- until he discovered his lovely wives were really serpent-demons!" I kinda like this tagline because it uses unclear pronouns. I was really hoping that this novel would be about a really happy guy name Li Fong, and how no man could be happier than Li Fong unless that man discovered that his wives were serpent demons (which apparently makes you happy). Re-read the tagline and you will see what I mean. It's poorly written.
The Content:
The plot of The Devil Wives Of Li Fong is pretty much what you would expect. Two serpent demons are granted human form by a monk who recognizes their good Karma. It is worth noting that demons in this novel aren't necessarily evil but they are driven by compulsion to do things which usually create large amounts of bad karma, such as killing their loved ones and devouring children. By fighting these compulsions Mei Ling and Meilan have been allowed to take on human form. At the start of the novel they are not completely human though, and must continue to generate good karma for themselves to transform completely into human beings. In ancient China I guess the best way for a woman to generate good karma is to be a good wife. And that brings us too Li Fong. Mie Ling and Mielan randomly decide that he would be a good husband because he is relatively physically attractive and wears the clothing of an apprentice scholar. After sucessfully seducing him and marrying him they are robbed by two bandits who reveal that not only are Li Fong's new wives super hot and totally horny, they are also loaded with silver. The novel never really explains how they got this silver. Li Fong deals with the bandits by creating a potion that makes them lose their memories, a useful little trick he learned in apprentice scholar school I guess. After that they decided to get the heck out of town and they resettle in a new town named Soochow and use some of that silver to purchase an herb shop for Li Fong to work in. Li Fong and his wives soon become the talk of the town because of how powerful his herbal cures are. This arouses the anger of some local holy men because Li Fong is cutting into their healing people for money business. A lot of wacky stuff happens and in the end the good guys win.
This novel surprised me in a couple of ways. One is that (at least to my untrained eye) it appears that the author did quite a bit of research about ancient China to make this novel at least seem authentic. I don't know a lot about Chinese philosophy but all the talk of Buddhas and karma was pretty interesting, assuming that the author didn't just make it up. I was also surprised by how the novel really couldn't decide what genre it wanted to be. It bounced from Chinese sword and sorcery, to philosophy, to romantic comedy, to trashy sex-scene-centric novel, sometimes over the course of a single chapter. It also had a weird habit of leaving out pieces of plot that I felt were really essential, like how exactly his wives came into possession of all that silver. Finally the novel had a bad habit of presenting info at the beginning of the novel that kinda took the thunder out of later events. For example, within the first 30 pages of the book they mention that there is an herb that you can put into wine, and that if a serpent woman drinks the wine, she will revert to her snake form. This piece of info is revealed before Li Fong has even met Mie Ling and Meilan. It really seems kinda heavy handed. This also happens later in the novel when Mie Ling is explaining some of the peculiar aspects of Chinese magic to Mielan, as a matter of fact it kind of gives away the ending of the book.
Despite being a silly adventure novel at heart, the book does seem to carry a little of the authors personal views along with it. Namely he seems pretty anti organized religion. His protagonists seem pretty devout in their beliefs, and certainly the aspect of karma plays heavily in the book, but all of the villains in the book are clergymen from either the Buddhist or Taoist religions. The author even makes it a point to say that they man who does evil but thinks he is honestly serving his God is way more dangerous than the man who willfully does evil. This is a little to heady for what is essentially a book about kung fu and banging hot Chinese ladies.
Over all in spite of some of its short comings I did kinda like the book. It was silly, fun, and the only other Chinese themed book I have ever read was The Good Earth. I can say with some authority that The Good Earth was a "better" book than The Devil Wives Of Li Fong. But The devil wives were more fun to read about. The cover of the novel does a pretty good job of reflecting the content, although It might have been wise to sex up the cover a little bit since so much of the novel dealt with the doing of "The Nasty." All in all I give The Devil Wives Of Li Fong a medium to semi high awesome rating. It was really fun, but some of the plot holes and way to early revelations keep this book from a higher score.
Next Week's Title:
Fuzzies And Other People
