Under Heaven is an innovative novel by the award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay, which evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China in a story of honor and power.
It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses.
You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise, he would probably be dead already...
Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history, and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.
Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving. Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity. A fine and original work.
Ruin wakes up on Earth knowing only one thing: to Judge and Execute.
As an Angel of Judgment with no memory of his origins and no ability to communicate, he seeks help from Isadore, the first human he comes into contact with. Without realizing, he binds molecularly with the OCD Neuroscientist, and slowly becomes permanently attached to her.
But, there is a mission he's sent to accomplish and it isn't about Isadore. Or is it? Something about the eccentric and beautiful woman seems to be preventing him from remembering what he must do in order to complete his task on Earth.
In the breathtaking third book of the Ruin Series, The Judgment, Ruin tackles missions designed to bring him face to face with the answers he desperately needs. Soon, however, he discovers that the clues he gains to unravel the mysteries of his mission will declare war on his heart and soul.