In his critically acclaimed novel Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel
Kay told a vivid and powerful story inspired by China’s Tang
Dynasty. Now, the international bestselling and multiple
award-winning author revisits that invented setting four
centuries later with an epic of prideful emperors, battling
courtiers, bandits and soldiers, nomadic invasions, and a
woman battling in her own way, to find a new place for women
in the world – a world inspired this time by the glittering,
decadent Song Dynasty. Ren Daiyan was still just a boy when
he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial
magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed
his life—in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the
forests of Kitai among the outlaws. From there he emerges
years later—and his life changes again, dramatically, as he
circles towards the court and emperor, while war approaches
Kitai from the north. Lin Shan is the daughter of a scholar,
his beloved only child. Educated by him in ways young women
never are, gifted as a songwriter and calligrapher, she
finds herself living a life suspended between two worlds.
Her intelligence captivates an emperor—and alienates women
at the court. But when her father’s life is endangered by
the savage politics of the day, Shan must act in ways no
woman ever has. In an empire divided by bitter factions
circling an exquisitely cultured emperor who loves his
gardens and his art far more than the burdens of governing,
dramatic events on the northern steppe alter the balance of
power in the world, leading to events no one could have
foretold, under the river of stars.
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy