The Poet Empress
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4.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Debut author Shen Tao introduces readers to the lush, deadly world of The Poet Empress, a sweeping, epic and intimate fantasy perfect for fans of The Serpent & the Wings of Night, The Song of Achilles and She Who Became the Sun.
In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land consumed by famine, and poetry magic lost to all except the powerful.
Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.
Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.
But in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center…at the side of a violent prince.
To survive, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself. Even if it means becoming a poet in a world where women are forbidden to read—and composing the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of death...and love.
The Poet Empress is an epic fantasy that explores darker themes, subjects, and scenes that may not be suitable for all readers. Please see the author's content note at the beginning of the book.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tao's haunting debut immerses readers in a famine-stricken empire where poetry is power. In the final years of the Azalea Dynasty, Yin Wei, a peasant girl desperate to save her starving family, volunteers as concubine to the notoriously cruel Prince Guan Terren. This act of survival pulls her into a labyrinth of palace intrigue and rebellion, where each written word contains magic that can shape a person's destiny, but where female literacy is illegal. Against the lush backdrop of Tao's lyrical worldbuilding, which draws from Chinese history and myth to craft a court defined by both beauty and brutality, Wei's transformation from naive villager to calculating courtesan is expertly rendered. Meanwhile, Terren emerges as a monstrous yet profoundly human prince. Their uneasy bond anchors a story less about romance than the corruptive and redemptive powers of language and ambition. The many political threads become fascinatingly tangled, Tao's prose gleams with poetic precision, and climactic revelations strike with devastating inevitability. Fans of R.F. Kuang's The Poppy War and Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun will be enthralled by this fierce meditation on love, power, and survival through art.
