The Long Song of Shanyin

During the Yongming era of the Liu Song dynasty in the Southern Dynasties, the imperial palace is a bottomless abyss.

Liu Zheng, Marquis of Shanyin, takes the throne over the blood of his father and brothers. Beneath the dragon throne, family ties and political intrigue have long since torn each other apart. His eldest daughter, Liu Lingzi, transforms from an innocent painter into a coolheaded player, shouldering the burden of protecting her mother and younger brother amid the turmoil of her parents’ discord and the consort’s tyranny. Crown Prince Liu Ziye witnessed a bloody massacre atop the city walls at the age of four. Haunted all his life by nightmares of his father’s suspicion, he grows from a terrified boy into a patient heir, while love and hatred burn again and again within the palace’s icy walls.

When a marriage meant to bring good fortune becomes an absurd farce, when an imperial edict turns a brother and sister against each other, and when the emperor on the throne burns portraits of his ancestors amid his obsession with elixirs and descent into madness, every inch of this palace, piled high with gold and jade, is steeped in schemes and blood.

This is a dark, realistic court epic, a mournful song of humanity caught in the grinding gears of power. Witness how members of the imperial family are warped by suspicion, hold fast through despair, and finally perish in madness. When war fires on the northern frontier and the blades of a palace coup light up the night sky over Jiankang, who can find a glimmer of redemption before the world is swallowed by bloodshed?