(Guys, please stop asking for updates. The novel didn't pass its recommendation review, so it's been suspended indefinitely. If enough people like it, I may consider resuming it. If that bothers you, please don't read it. I might write a prequel later.)
Alternate history + carefully constructed worldbuilding + male protagonist + world history + long-form, hard-core fiction
This story leans toward institutional history and travel literature, with a bit of a road-trip feel as well. It takes a close look at small details to gradually reveal the world. The pacing is slow, so please don't read it if that's not your thing.
The tides of history shift and change. If the Ming dynasty had not fallen to the chaos of the northern invaders in the seventeenth century, but had survived another three hundred years in East Asia, how might upheaval and renewal, expansion and transformation, have given this ancient land a whole new soul? This book begins with an ordinary man and shows you what the Ming Empire might have looked like if it had endured until 1899!
