Barbarians and the Birth of Chinese Identity: The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the Yuan Dynasty by Jing Liu

Barbarians and the Birth of Chinese Identity: The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms to the Yuan Dynasty by Jing Liu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy Chinese history and non-fiction graphic novels about people, places, and history. This book is written well and covers a *lot* of topics. This period of history in China is very intricate and it would take a very large tome to uncover all the details of the era covered here. Jing Lui has done a good job of explaining the situation at this time, the wars, the different empires and leaders moving on to the point where the Mongols had their largest empire. The book is black and white and has distinctly Chinese illustration: a bit comic-like with a dash of manga. The book has a lot of text and isn't like a traditional graphic novel but it is one, nevertheless. Pages form anywhere from one huge to three smaller frames. The text is mostly given in the narration with approx. one speech bubble per two-page spread. While the topic is complicated the book's design is not. The illustrations are clean and neat and enhance the text with graphic representations of facts in map or chart form.