This was by far my favorite volume of the three I've read so far. Of course, my darling Xi-feng took center stage for most of it (apart from all of those times when she was indisposed), so naturally I was more interested by the events of this book. Yes, I am a Xi-feng apologist, even after what she did to all of those people. ( )

After a long delay between volume 2 and 3 I have finally finished A Dream of Red Mansions. A long and different tale from what I was expecting. Hard to follow at times with names that looked similar to me. Still engaging and a fascinating work. ( )

Back on form after the longeurs and endless poetry of vol. II, here is where the cracks really start to show in the social and financial structures of the Rong/Ning clan. We also get one or two magical-realist incursions, unseen since vol. I, in the form of ghostly and monkish visitations. With Xi-feng spending most of the volume recovering from a miscarriage, and the other adults away for an extended period attending to funerary rites, things in the garden go haywire as servant-intrigues proliferate, the actresses are unleashed, and the gilded youth grow inevitably apart as adulthood looms. Bao-yu cuts a very pathetic figure, left behind by all this change, who "should have been born a girl" and, despite losing his virginity to Aroma very early in the book, seems both unable and unwilling to leave childhood behind or face the "interesting times" on the horizon. Tan-chun emerges as an old head on young shoulders, taking on some of Xi-feng's last-ditch financial dyke-plugging duties while gloomily noting that "the beast with a thousand legs is a long time dying."

Some wonderful subplots including Jia Lian's second marriage and Xi-feng's thwarting of it, the violent romance involving the You sisters, the mystery of the pornographic trinket, and Xue Pan's unfortunate marriage. I also loved the archery debauches across the street and the moon-viewing party with its distant flute and eerie aftermath in which Dai-yu (who's surely not long now for this world) and Bao-yu wander the garden in the dead of night. And, despite my above dig at the surfeit of versifying, Bao-yu's elegy for poor Skybright really is the culmination of David Hawkes's amazing work with the poetic aspects of the book — so rich and complex in its imagery and deeply moving. Kudos also to the crazy poem featuring 30+ rhymes for "gate" which somehow holds its head high while employing words like "pernoctate". I'm sad that I have to part ways with Hawkes for the last two vols, tr. Minford. The image of Xue Pan's unpleasant wife gnawing the bones of fowls, "crisp-fried in boiling fat", is a suitably ominous one on which to end... ( )

Quite a change from the last two volumes. In many ways it feels like it comes off the rails, as more and more time gets spent on digressions and the love triangle that's ostensibly at the heart of the plot fades to nothingness. The poetry also all but disappears and gets replaced by high melodrama and a creeping sense of doom. "The beast with a thousand legs is a long time dying," but by Chapter 80 everyone in the household can see the end. It might seem like so many changes to something already perfect would cause the quality to drop, but the growing sense of emptiness and decay produces some of the most beautiful moments of the entire novel so far: the lonely Mid-Autumn Festival, Bao-yu's elegy for Skybright, the flower cards, and of course the long, long saga of Er-jie and San-jie which explodes into the quiet lives of the Jias to reveal just how bad things have been allowed to get. Almost no one makes it out of this book unaltered except, maybe, Dai-yu, but as the last few chapters make clear her fate as well is closing in on her. Despite minor continuity errors and some strange pacing, the writing in this volume is some of Cao Xueqin's finest. If the lost 40 chapters had never been "found," I would say that what we have by the end of the volume would both be enough to make most of the rest of the plot clear, and to confirm The Story of the Stone as an awe-inspiring, life-changing work of art. ( )

My reading of this saga has slowed somewhat, due to being really busy, but I'm still making my way through, and I still get immersed when I am reading it. Two more volumes to go. This was the longest of the five. I think volume two is my favourite so far, followed by this one, and then the first volume. ( )