River of Stars

В легендах Китая Звездная река лежит между смертными и их мечтами. Что бы ни случилось на земле между мужчинами и женщинами - жизнь и смерть, слава и радость, горе и конец горя - звезды не меняются. Если не считать случайно пролетевшей кометы, которая иногда ненадолго появляется, очень яркая, потом тускнеет, а потом исчезает. Совсем как люди, некогда жившие на этой древней земле - правители и крестьяне, поэты и воины, герои и предатели. Но некоторые из них, уплыв навсегда по искрящейся небесной реке, обретали новую жизнь в легендах и песнях. Роман Кея Гэвриела "Звездная река" - это история возникновения одной такой песни. Книга на английском языке. 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 - 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.