Five "brothers" from the Cangzhen Temple are the only survivors when their temple is burned. They're told by the Grandmaster, before he was murdered, to scatter and find out about their enemy's history, as well as their own. This book focuses on Malao, which is Cantonese for "monkey." At the temple, he runs into his brother Hok, and they formulate a plan to steal the Grandmaster's body. They manage to steal it, but Malao is so terrified of dead bodies that he flees into the forest. There, he runs into a band of monkeys. When the monkeys attack a bandit gang, the bandits kill many monkeys before Malao stops the bandits and the monkeys flee. After he escapes from the bandits, he meets back up with the albino monkey from the monkey band. The monkey leads him back to the temple, where he apologizes to Hok and pays his respects to the Grandmaster. Then he stays with Hok to discover more about their enemy, Ying. They find out that their brother, Fu, has been captured, and they decide to go rescue him. Fu's captors capture them as well, and all seems lost. Their captors underestimate them, and they manage to escape. Hok separates from Fu and Malao. They decide to try to get the Dragon Scrolls back from Ying. After they steal the scrolls back, they go to a village that Fu’s been to before. There, they get food and then follow the white monkey to the Shaolin Temple to meet up with Hok. There, they find the temple destroyed, and they bump into Seh. The only surviving monk tells them that Hok may be dead, and then he steals the Dragon Scrolls. Then Ying shows up and starts to fight with the monk, who is actually the Emperor’s General Tsung. Tsung beats Ying, and Seh steals the Scrolls back from Tsung. After they have the Scrolls, the three boys flee into the woods.
This book kept me reading right until the end, and I never wanted to put it down. Malao was my favorite character because he was really energetic and acted a little like a monkey. The ending was AWESOME because it left a lot of questions to be answered in book three. This book was really good compared to other books of the same type that I've read, and could become the next best-seller. This book taught me that size really doesn't matter. The vocabulary level was appropriate for elementary school readers. This author has a unique writing style, and I really enjoyed this book, which was told in third-person view. The author used an adequate amount of detail, and the author left questions unanswered at the end of this book, which should be answered in the next book. I would have liked the book better if the author had told more about the other boys, and not just Malao.
Rating (0 - 10 scale): 9
Reviewer Age: 15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Highland, Michigan USA
