A Review of Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (Little, Brown and Company, 2021)

Posted by: uttararangarajan

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn

Edited by Uttara Rangarajan 
 

Wow, Tom Lin’s The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (Little, Brown and Company, 2021) was the surprise read for me this year. On yet another flight, I brought this one along, thinking it would be a traditional Western, with an Asian American twist. There is something definitely going on with the neo-Asian Americanist Western and Lin has tapped into it in what I would call a mashup of Cormac McCarthy’s dark Westerners and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love. In any case, let’s let the marketing description give us some context: “Orphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad. Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale. Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.”

 

The reference to Ted Chiang is spot on, only insofar as I didn’t realize that this novel would have such a strong speculative turn. At first, there is a little bit of that Asian mysticism in the figure of the prophet who can foretell things without fail, but as the revenge plot gets into high gear, Ming Tsu finds himself working for hire as part of a troupe. I’m really glad I didn’t read any paratextual material prior to starting because I only knew that there was going to be some sort of crime element to the plot based upon the cover and the title. So, while I was on the plane, I kept thinking: wow, this has taken such a weird, cool turn, and reminds me of some of the recent writings coming up that we’ve seen like C. Pam Zhang’s phenomenal work, How Much of These Hills is Gold. The ending, in particular, was surprising to me, but it made so much logical sense. I can definitely see this book getting some critical attention in the future and very much look forward to what else Tom Lin has in store for us. Intriguingly, I think Lin is in the PhD program in English at UC Davis, so I’m guessing we will have much more to read on the academic end as well!

 

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