This was a golden age that could never be repeated, and a heroic epic full of contradictions and allure.
It was an age of dazzling splendor: the moonlight over Chang’an illuminated Li Bai’s poems, while the camel bells along the Silk Road heralded envoys from every land. The Reign of Zhenguan and the Kaiyuan Prosperity shone so brightly that generations to come would yearn for them a thousand years later.
It was also an age of utter madness: the bloody oath at Xuanwu Gate, the empress who defied fate, the noble consort in her rainbow skirts and feathered robes… Power and love, intrigue and romance took turns on the grandest stage of all.
Yet it all began with Li Yuan, the “indecisive” governor of Taiyuan, and his eighteen-year-old second son, Li Shimin, a bold young man who dared to stake everything on an earthshaking gamble in the Jinyang Palace on a sweltering summer night.
From the desperate uprising at Jinyang, to the splendor of the Zhenguan era, to the cries of grief beneath Mawei Slope… This book tells the story of a dynasty: how a group of once-in-a-generation geniuses raised it to its peak, and how, amid a rebellion that swept away all before it, it slowly and tragically sank into decline.
