3.5 StarsI enjoyed this sequel, although not quite as much as the first two volumes. The stakes in this volume just felt less serious and I found myself fatigued by the amount of time spent on the kung foo fighting. Nevertheless, I am still very invested in this series and am eagerly awaiting the next book.

Just when I think there won’t be more poor twists, Jin Yong surprises me with more twists and characters I didn’t see coming. I absolutely enjoyed this book. There are so many characters I like, and I’d love to read more about them. Seriously, I don’t know how everything will end in just one book.

Not the peak of the Condor series but nevertheless a gripping dive further into the world of this established universe. Although I felt this book continued the excellent prose, setting and character development of the previous volume I didn't feel like I could quite give it 5 stars. In reality it probably lays somewhere between the first and second volumes in readability. It started and ended very well, but the middle segment felt slow, a bit repetitive and a little inconsistent. I also found th...

Pretty much everything I said about the first two books in the series applies to this one: Charles Dickens lite...with kung fu fighting, excellent introduction to Chinese culture and geography, insightful look at Chinese values and norms, wonderful world-building around the different martial-arts schools and fighting techniques.However, there are two glaring deficiencies with this novel when compared to the previous two. Number one, the setting is just too limited. The first 150 pages or so is s...

A Snake Lies Waiting picks up immediately where A Bond Undone leaves off, with Guo Jing, Count Seven Hong, and Zhou Botong on a sinking boat, far from land and surrounded by sharks. What follows is more of the epic feats of kung fu, dramatic reveals, clever trickery, sly villains, and bitter feuds that characterize the Legends of the Condor Heroes series.This series continues to be a delight. I’ve seen other reviews complaining that this was slower than the other books in the series, but I’m not...

Less enjoyable than the first two books.Unreciprocated gallantry and naïveté of the good guys after at the receiving end of repeated treacheries is very exasperating.It’s against human nature and very unrealistic.But hey this is the book about made up martial world.So It’s still ok for entertainment purpose.

Weak entry in the series. A solid 3/5 of the book is the literary version of Goku in the healing tank on Namek, with all the secondary characters being paraded in front of him resolving their storylines in an awkward manner.

Just wow

Third installation of Legends of the Condor Heroes translated from Jin Yong. Great read and represents the lofty goal other martial arts books strive to emulate. Again with the brilliant art work on the cover and in the text.

Meandering goofy first half, where is the plot?, then sort of redeems itself near the end Sigh. I don't know about this third novel. It's...a disappointment. I don't understand, the first one was so masterful, the right balance of action, drama, humor intrigue, everything. Then the second was really good. It feels like it's just sort of gone downhill from there. Where to begin? (view spoiler)[ This first part, god it was annoying. We were left with all the characters voyaging off Peach Bloss

Found a spelling error hahaha...Chapter five " In The Secret Chamber" part 9 ( page 274 for the paperback) " Uncle" is spelled as "Unlce" ( 'I doubt it, ' Qiu Chuji countered. 'If only Unlce Zhou knew we were here, he might come back this way.'...)Anyways:I agree with others that the middle of the book is a bit slower, though we do get to see some interesting characters and martial art battles. The particular battle between the Quanzhen sect masters and Apothecary Huang was pretty cool. Unfortun...

Why must I wait one year for volume 4? 😱😱

So...this third installment into the series undoubtedly loses a bit of steam, but it’s still worth reading so that I can one day complete series. The books were written like 60 years ago in China but for some reason we can’t get the 4th and final part in America until April 2021. The reason the story dipped in quality is because 75% of it was the same characters fighting the same villain but in like 6 different settings. Each time an outcome would be reached a character would make a last second

While this is an addictive series, it is also irritating.There is no clear objective. Things just keep going and going, with no end in sight. This may be the point. It's a mechanism to explore character vignettes.Every character seems gullible. If a stranger tells them their father is dead and points to a random second stranger as the murderer... it's off to battle without a pause for consideration.Loyalty to one's martial family trumps everything. If you see one of your brethren in a fight, don...

Despite the action-packed opening, for me it was a slow process to get into this one — probably in large part because it's been quite a while since I read the first two books. But I enjoyed Guo Jing and Lotus's journey, the brawn-and-brain duo (or heart-and-head, if you prefer) and it was fun to see (view spoiler)[so many returning characters converge on one site, albeit coming and going at different points (hide spoiler)]; the list of characters in the beginning was somewhat helpful for keeping...

This is an absolute revelation. They call him Chinese Tolkien, but this is more like Dickens, but with kung fu. The characters are diverse and fleshy, totally believable and with more than one dimension to all of them, the plot keeps developing with surprise twists, the romance is going strong, the villains are doing their villainy things, etc. This is an absolute joy of a book, and I can't recommend it enough. The audio version is superb! I cannot wait for the next book to be translated!

What a glorious ride this third novel in the Legends of the Condor Heroes was!I stumbled across the first book on a whim, mainly interested in seeing how martial arts could come alive in page-form, and I'm so glad I did. I knew nothing of this series importance, culturally and historically, and after reading the third book I can see why. Yong truly is a master in every sense of the word. The fight scenes are engaging and beautiful to imagine. They tell the story rather than just lend it some act...

“It’s always good to learn something new” A Snake Lies Waiting (2020), the third entry in Jin Yong’s four-volume martial arts historical fantasy epic Legends of the Condor Heroes (1959), begins in mid-cliffhanger where the second one, A Bond Undone (2019), ended. Young Guo Jing and his martial masters Zhou Botong (AKA the Hoary Urchin) and Count Seven Hong (AKA the Northern Beggar) find themselves bobbing in a shark-infested sea. The trio are “rescued” by the ship of the villainous Western Venom...

I didn’t take too long this time to start the third book after finishing the second because A Heart Divided ended on quite a tense note and I wanted to know what was gonna happen next. I think I enjoyed this book more in first 30-40% on the ships and the remote island. The confrontations between Count Seven Hong, Guo Jing and the Ouyangs was fun to read about and it was interesting to see how the tides kept changing in each of their favor quite frequently. But some of the middle part felt boring...

meh