When I was first introduced to the Five Dynasties period as a graduate student circa 1990, there was very little available on the subject in English. Wang Gungwu's The Structure of Power in North China during the Five Dynasties (1963) came very close to defining the field. In recent years, this rather messy era of imperial disunity and ephemeral regimes has attracted a great deal more attention, including Johannes Kurz's study of the Southern Tang and a volume of essays edited by Peter Lorge (both published in 2011). No one, however, has made a greater contribution than Richard Davis, whose translation of Ouyang Xiu's eleventh-century Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (2004) was followed by biographies of Li Cunxu and Li Siyuan, the first and second rulers of the Later Tang dynasty, which dominated northern China from 923 to 937. In a reversal of the usual pattern for works by Anglophone scholars, the book on Li Cunxu was first published in Chinese in 2009 and is only now appearing in English. Fire and Ice is by no means identical in content to its Chinese precursor; not only does it draw on the most recent secondary scholarship, but its treatment of the tribal origins of the regime's Shatuo rulers has also been revised on the basis of primary source material that had not been consulted for the 2009 edition. In his preface, Davis makes it clear that “this English version should supersede the Chinese original.” (p. x)

Even for historians specializing in the Middle Period of Chinese history, Li Cunxu (885–926) is far from being a familiar figure on the order of Sui Yangdi, Tang Taizong, or Song Huizong. His grandfather, a Shatuo Turk warlord, had been granted the imperial surname of Li for his service to the former Tang court, and his father Li Keyong continued the family's legitimist tradition by battling the usurper Zhu Wen, founder of the Later Liang dynasty, from a territorial base in what is now Shanxi province. Inheriting the leadership of his father's politico-military organization in 908, Li Cunxu went on to extend his domination over the fractious military provinces of Hebei and then, in 923, overthrew the Later Liang based in Kaifeng to bring most of northern China under the control of his recently proclaimed Later Tang dynasty. Just three years later, immediately after his forces had subjugated the Shu kingdom in distant Sichuan, he confronted a series of army mutinies and was killed in a revolt of his own officers. He was succeeded on the throne by his adopted brother Li Siyuan, a successful general who had been put forward by the mutinous soldiery. Although short-lived, the Later Tang was by no means insignificant: the founders of the sequence of successor regimes that followed it in the north—the Jin, Han, and Zhou—had all been members of the Later Tang officer corps, and Zhao Kuangyin, founder of the much more durable Song dynasty, was in turn a product of the Han and Zhou military.

In telling the story of the meteoric rise and even more abrupt downfall of the first Later Tang emperor, Richard Davis hews closely to the most important (and obvious) sources for the political history of the Five Dynasties, namely Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, Xue Juzheng's Old History of the Five Dynasties, and Ouyang Xiu's Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (better known as the New History of the Five Dynasties). The result is that the book contains much material on court intrigues, on the various military campaigns against the Later Liang, the Hebei garrisons, the Kitan state of the northeast, and the Shu kingdom in the southwest, and on the relationships between Li Cunxu and his family members, key subordinates, and other potentates. Davis is at his best adumbrating the character and personal foibles of his subject. The son of a Turkic chieftain and a Han mother, Li Cunxu was both a redoubtable warrior and a participant in Chinese literary culture—much like the great Tang Taizong, whom he appears to have regarded as a model. Yet he also had an unconventional side. He enjoyed the company of actors and musicians, pursued homosexual liaisons with some of them, and appointed others to office—including the same sorts of military supervisory positions that had usually been held by eunuchs during the ninth century. According to some sources, “this monarch of unruly passions” was cremated on a pyre of musical instruments (p. 194). Davis also does a fine job of tracing the influence of the women in Li Cunxu's life, including his birth mother Consort Cao, his father's primary wife Woman Liu (surprisingly, the two ladies had a very close friendship), and his own scheming Empress Liu.

What this book does not offer is a central, overarching argument, nor does it stray very far from the doings of the ruling elites to consider the social, economic, and institutional trends of the time. Nevertheless, there are a number of themes that keep resurfacing in the course of Davis's narrative. One is the tension between steppe and sedentary ways, with hints of modern academic debates over sinicization and ethnicity looming in the background. Another, a continuing pattern from the eighth and ninth centuries, is the unruly behavior of the professional (or mercenary) soldiery, keenly aware of their corporate interests and always capable of striking out violently in defense of pay and privileges. Even more intriguing is the Later Tang regime's stance of identifying itself as the legitimate continuation of the earlier Tang dynasty and its penchant for harking back to Tang precedents, despite a marked lack of enthusiasm for seeking out actual heirs of the original Li bloodline. Unfortunately, Davis does not call attention to these themes in the book's introduction and conclusion, leaving it to his readers to pick them out for themselves.

Despite this shortcoming, Fire and Ice still provides an intricate and fascinating picture of politics, war, and court intrigue during a pivotal phase of Chinese history. It is an important addition to the literature on the Five Dynasties, and it will surely enjoy a long reign as the definitive study of this monarch who rose through war (“fire”) and then fell victim to rejection (“ice”).