... addictively gruesome ... manages to enhance a wild, wild western with Odyssean devotion, magic realism and historical racism, to create quite the unlikely love story gone awry ... Ming's story of denial becomes Lin's ingenious assertion of his own Chinese American heritage, his fiction a literal projection of the Chinese American experience onto the page. Lin cleverly reclaims the language as he marks each of the story's three parts with untranslated Chinese characters ... With dexterous agility, Lin showcases Ming's multi-faceted identity as a native-born American, a builder of transcontinental railroads, a rebel against racist laws, a killer of injustice--and maybe even a hero who might finally get the girl.

In this unforgiving landscape, which Lin vividly and meticulously describes in prose whose music is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s, even a rainstorm can take on mythical proportions ... The book is filled with gunfights, blood and dust, and gruesome murders with details that are cinematic and precise, down to the number of bullets left. Death in this 'ancient and deathless' terrain is always too close, where the land is sometimes a resplendent spectacle, more often a callous god ... It can be difficult to keep a narrative moving in a desolate setting and some of Lin’s descriptive sentences can feel overladen ... The men on Ming’s hit list are largely interchangeable, and even his wife, Ada, whom he plans to retrieve, is delivered in dreamy snippets that make their love feel thin and a bit stock. This story line may have been more convincing on the screen, where visuals could have conveyed ardor and distinctiveness, but on the page, with an often stoic character, it’s hard to invest in this aspect of his journey. Also, the supernatural abilities of the magic-show characters sometimes swoop in and remove the obstacles in Ming’s way, which lets some of the tension out of the story, and despite his accumulated blood, sweat and grit, Ming can feel too invincible ... Lin’s prose captures the terrifying, repetitive power of nature.

The story’s supernatural elements never get in the way of the action, as first-time novelist Tom Lin displays remarkable skill in maneuvering his plot and characters so that readers continue to believe the tale even when it seems impossible, as when a cougar befriends Ming and shares its water and food with the man. This is a major work that enlarges our view of the Wild West and marks Lin as a writer to watch.

Infused with magic realism, Lin’s beautifully imagined first novel is an extraordinary epic with page-turning, often cinematic action that transcends the parameters of genre fiction. A brilliant debut, impossible to put down.

There's a lot to love in this expansive debut ... a truly cinematic Western. Its vistas and action sequences are perfectly designed for fans of graphic novels and the big screen alike. Similarly, the body count is crafted for an audience that enjoys adrenaline's pulse in its ears. Lin's wordcraft is deft and painterly, whether he's describing a fight scene or a desert. But genre expectations that could have broadened narrative horizons flatten many of the characters into archetypes, rather than elevating them to memorable story arcs of their own ... That Ming uses these biases to his advantage, while also wrestling with some disconnection from the community because he was raised outside of the language and culture, creates a finely held tension throughout ... brings its readers face to face with the consequences of the Pacific Railway expansion, paired with characters who are likely heroes in other genres but who function as archetypes in this one ... We understand why Ming does what he does, but when he seems to turn from a potentially redemptive arc, every connection he's forged to other types of stories and the people he's met along the way (those he has not killed) become scenery. A landscape moved through, rather than a possible transformation ... While The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, from its very first pages, states very clearly what it is going to give its readers (crimes, lots of them,) the plot arc feels similarly predestined by its understanding of what the genre requires. At the end of a very long road, the protagonist does not waver. He is offered other options but cannot take them, in part because that's not who he is and in part because the plot demands that he doesn't deviate, despite all evidence that he could ... I am curious to see more of this landscape, its twined fantastical and historical aspects especially, from more points of view — the Prophet's backstory, for instance, and additional members of the troupe.. It is an important, vivid story, with characters led through the landscape by the demands of its plot. The novel is eminently entertaining, and absolutely there for those who love a good fight. For this reader, the variable and evolving arc of the magic troupe's journey, and the tensions between bias and isolation, transformation and predetermination captured my imagination even more than Ming's revenge plot. I hope we see more of all these stories from Tom Lin in the future.

Lin is hardly the first to reframe the Western as something other than blunt-spoken white men in big hats. Stacey Lee and C Pam Zhang have written novels featuring Chinese characters in the Wild West ... Nor have Chinese, Native Americans or others been entirely absent from Westerns, but they have almost always been in supporting roles, usually without much in the way of agency. Lin’s characterization of Ming Tsu puts a Chinese man in the role of a hero ... While the novel is a repositioning of a classic American story, it’s also a tribute to the American West itself ... [Lin] has created a dreamy Western landscape starring a sympathetic protagonist—bloody railroad stakes and all.

... disappointing ... Evocative prose makes up only in part for a predictable revenge plotline and stock characters. Those with a taste for gory westerns may be satisfied.