Son of the Flying Tiger
by Marshall Macao (Thaddeus Thallejah or maybe Sandy Sidar)
1973, Freeway Press
Cover by Barry Smith
.jpg)
.jpg)
Chong Fei K'ing is the orphaned half-American, half-Chinese son of the Flying Tiger, an American pilot who assisted the Chinese in World War II. He's being trained in Kung Fu by master Lin Fong, mostly just hanging around the desert.
K'ing is joined by another boy, Kak, who is more impulsive and has a dark side. They are challenged by an evil American master and things get very Jedi. There's a backstory involving an Atlantis/Shangri-La city destroyed in a war between the good Blue Circle and evil Red Circle. Fong warns the kids not to kill the Red Circle challengers or they will turn to the dark, um, red side. This despite the fact that they've killed scores of Stromtr-, er, opium smugglers.
It's all very, very Star Wars, three years early. I doubt very much that Lucas was inspired directly like he was by, say, Far Out Space Nuts. I imagine both were influenced by episodes of Carradine's Kung Fu.
We're in origin story mode, with little else going on, so I suspect future installments will have more plot. The fight scenes worked well for me, not quite blow for blow, but it didn't rely on one-strike kills like Mace. The fight prose combined exotic martial arts moves with brutal violence, can't go wrong with that.
This series was advertised as having monthly releases. There were six in the series, with a phantom seventh that was announced but never released.
Years ago this was one of the first books I bought for Kindle, probably available as a bootleg in the more wild west days of ebooks.
From Amazon https://amzn.to/3u9v8oG
No comments:
Post a Comment