I’m on my second time through Boxers & Saints and still bowled over by how good it is.  A modified version of the tale of Princess Miaoshan, which existed most popularly in the form of a baojuan, interrupts the plot of Boxers with a moment of peace and hope before the final battle.  That enough would have been exciting to me, but how the tale comes back in Saints is nothing short of brilliant.  I don’t want to say too much, I think you should just read them for yourselves.

Literary license had been taken with some of the history, but it’s for the sake of a compelling story that gets at some of the painful, heartbreaking truths of powerlessness and uprisings.