The orphaned son of Chinese immigrants, Ming Tsu is raised by the leader of a California crime syndicate and later elopes with Ada, the daughter of a railroad magnate. When the magnate's henchmen kidnap Ada and put Ming to work on the Union Pacific Railroad, he's out for revenge. An intriguing debut billed as a thriller, a romance, a Chinese American-inflected Western, and an 1860s-set redemption story with Cormac McCarthy overtones.

Somewhere in Utah, 1869. By his reckoning, Ming Tsu has killed some 200 men and is now on his way to killing five more, the five who had beaten him half to death, stolen his wife, and had him sentenced to 10 years of forced labor building the Central Pacific Railroad. Two years later, Ming has escaped and is ready for retribution and to reclaim his wife. Soon he is joined by the blind, ancient ("older than time") Prophet, who, like Ming, is Chinese and who will be his guide, both physical and spiritual. En route to revenge, Ming hooks up with a traveling miracle show featuring Proteus, a shape-shifter; the boy Hunter, who is deaf and mute but has the uncanny ability to project his voice into men's minds; and Hazel, the fireproof woman with whom he falls in love. Ming is hired as the show's guide and protector on its way to Reno, where Ming will leave them, and, with three of the five dead, he and the Prophet will head across the Sierra Nevada to California and his fateful encounter with the final two. 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.

Lin's disappointing debut opens in post-Civil War Utah, where the title character has just killed Judah Ambrose, a former labor recruiter for the Central Pacific Railroad. Ambrose was one of four men on Ming's hit list, and it gradually emerges that Ming and his white wife, Ada, eloped years ago after her businessman father objected to their relationship. But after just two months, her father arranged to have Ming beaten and charged with miscegenation; his punishment was a decade of hard labor laying rails for the Central Pacific in the desert. Ming is now searching for Ada, whom he believes is in California, and the men who mistreated him. At one point, he hooks up with a circus troupe whose company includes people with magical powers, but this supernatural twist adds little. 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. Agent: Lisa Queen, Queen Literary Agency. (June)