Author: Marina Bonomi
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!
If you think this sounds like a Chinese rip-off of a Harry Potter Story, think again. It's a nicely-written tale set in a fantasy land where there is a war of wills between two magical beings, one of whom is the feared Dragon King of Dongting Lake, and poor Ming Li is trapped in the middle of it.
For someone as smart as Li, you would imagine he would be able to keep himself out of trouble, but when he passed his exams with flying colors and then some, he naturally went out to celebrate with his friends, and who can blame him for wandering home late at night and a little worse for wear?
Even so everything would have been fine except that in a deserted street, Li finds himself kidnapped and taken to a cavern in the forest, where someone asks for his help and Li, not remotely sober yet, volunteers it. He wakes up in the morning expecting to have fond memories of a weird dream, but in practice, he's still in the cavern and now he finds himself bound by honor to go up against this dragon or suffer the shame of having his word taken to be worthless.
There's an error in the text where someone offers Li to do their "outmost" to help. What's really meant is that this person will do their "utmost". There were also some instances where a word ran into the one preceding it because there was a comma after the previous word, but no space after the comma.
The story resorted to a really old challenge presented to Li, whereby he can leave an area only by one of two doors. One of the doors leads to safety, the other to death, but the doors are guarded and of the two guards, one on each door, one always lies, the other always tells the truth. Li can ask only one question to determine which door he may safely choose. This is a well-known (although perhaps not by this author) 'Fork in the road' type of puzzle. It was also used in the movie Labyrinth.
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That aside, the story is inventive, charming, warm, sweet, and beautifully written. I recommend it.
