Story of the Stone

Wonderful follow-up to Hughart's successful paperback Bridge of Birds (1984), a fantasy-puzzler set in an eighth-century "China that never was," and starring Master Li, a spry, ancient sage "with a slight flaw in his character," and his narrator-sidekick, the hulking, bewildered Number Ten Ox. Li and Ox are called to a monastery in the remote Valley of Sorrows, where a forged ancient manuscript has been stolen, Brother Squint-Eyes lies dead, and the Laughing Prince - a ghoulish madman seven centuries dead - has evidently risen from his grave to work new infamies upon the terrified monks and peasants. Aided by amnesiac orphan and whore Grief of Dawn, musical wizard and catamite Moon Boy, and the Laughing Prince's oddball descendant Liu Pao, Li and Ox investigate - their suspicions centering on a mysterious and transcendentally powerful stone, apparently broken into three pieces and now causing much of the recent havoc, and on an ancient folk tale that hints of the stone's ultimate purpose. They follow a twisting, forking, bizarre trail that involves - among other things - magic mushrooms, the animated-corpse Monks of Mirth, wayside notes ("Wake up, rub eyes, examine bug crawling into left nostril"), and a hysterical trip through a Chinese Hell. A rich, rare, witty, wise performance, bubbling over with delights: utterly mesmerizing and absolutely not to be missed. (Kirkus Reviews)