This collection of eight Kai Lung stories came out in 1940, two years before the author's death. They show the same wit as the earlier ones. The humor comes less from the fictional Chinese setting than from Bramah's universal observations about human nature. Perhaps more than in the earlier works, there are pop cultural references to the England of the author's own time.
I'd recommend this book, but primarily to those who have read the earlier works, and acquired a taste for them. The humor seems a bit darker and more cynical here, and there is an occasional note of pessimism, particularly in the story "Lin T'sing's Ignoble Alliance". The story of the invention of gunpowder, in "Judgments of Prince Ying" clearly refers to international events of the late 1930s, as well as the horrors of modern warfare.
