We often attribute the word “art” to many things that aren’t related to color or texture on the wall.  We have heard of the “art of war” or the “art of problem solving” so it’s not a long stretch to say “art of prophecy”.  But I don’t think the author actually explained it; more the story was about a failure of prophecy and how it affected people and events.

Jian was raised in the lap of luxury as the prophesied hero who would defeat the man who was the hereditary nemesis of his people, the Eternal Khan.  He spent all his short life mastering every single war art skill known only to have his whole life ripped from him with the news that some unknown soldier had killed the unkillable Khan.  After all, if the unkillable villain is already slain what use do the people have for a Hero?

While those responsible for him are squabbling about whether to go ahead and murder him off or to hide him away just in case he still proves useful, his latest War Master shows pity and spirits him away. This Master is the legendary Taishi who is moved to pity combined with disgust on how easily he was to be thrown away, and hides him.  For Jian, his change in fortune is frustrating as he is forced to hide his war skills and pretend to be a novice, the lowest of the low.

Taishi is frustrated and confused; she can’t reconcile her decision to take the boy away and hide him.  Killing people has been her vocation for a very, very long time.  Why should one boy affect her so?  It’s really the prophecy that frustrates her so; how could it have been so wrongly interpreted or is there really more to it than anyone knows?  It seems to her to be a hasty decision to kill the boy without knowing more.  She’s also kind of pissed off when she finds that two Mute Men assassins are on their trail.  She hides the boy in plain sight with an old acquaintance of hers while she pursues the question of what happened to the prophecy.

Taishi’s travels take her to an old lover who manages a sort of monastery.  There she learns that the end of the prophecy is seeming to be the end of the religion around it; with no prophecy, no villain, nor hero, the people are drifting away and there’s nothing to replace what was solid ground just a short time before.  And no one remembers where the original temple was which might provide some answers.  All Taishi has to go on are old legends.  In her attempt to locate the original temple, she contracts with a master mapmaker who might be able to point her to the lost temple.  Unfortunately, her path intersects that of a shadowkill unit that was apparently sent to kill her and capture Jian, the Hero.  Since they were unable to do so, the leader, Qisami, takes her temper out on the mapmaker Taishi had employed leaving Taishi to partner with the dead man’s daughter; maybe the only other one able to read the maps.  Their travels eventually lead them to the legendary Oracle who, eight incarnations back, first spoke the prophecy.  As the monks explain, the prophecy was only intended to be a guide for the Emperor or Empress; it was never intended to be a statewide religion.  Only the Emperors and Empresses along the way declined to be guided and so no one knew how much had changed; the monks were unsurprised to know it had failed.  Again, Taishi was confronted by Qisami, the shadowkill who’d been tracking her.  Unable to kill Taishi, Qisami again took out her temper by killing the oracle.  As he breathed his last, he began to utter a new prophecy that meant nothing to Taishi.  However, some of the words made complete sense to Qisami who now knew where the young Hero was hiding.

Salminde came from a tribe of peoples who had a sort of floating or rolling city that moved about the Grass Sea; the cities collectively were known as the Katuia, the home of the dreaded Khan.  The land-bound cities, known as the Zhuun – where the Hero came from – had attacked and seven of their cities were demolished; the survivors absorbed into the land-bound cities as indentured servants. Salminde was one of a group who collectively held the “Will” of the dead Khan.  When he died, all of the group felt a pull to return their “Will” to the Khan and lay down to die next to him.  Salminde really did try to do her duty but at the last minute refused to lay down and die in such a useless gesture; instead, she decided her destiny lay in finding the next Khan so she embarked on a journey to test every child in the Khanate.  Along the way, she somehow decided that her indentured people needed rescuing.  Her travels take her deep into one of the Zhuun cities where she miraculously encounters Jian, who was still hiding his identity.  But Salminde’s abilities clearly identify him as her nemesis. While she is still dealing with the shock of the revelation, his friends help him escape.

Salminde is now dealing with three life-changing events: kill the Hero, find the next Khan, and rescue thousands of her people and return them to the Grass Sea.  Unfortunately, her fate intersects that of Qisami who has appeared to kill the Hero, and Taishi who has correctly assumed that her hidden charge is now in danger.  It’s a large city but made quite a bit smaller when three highly trained and dangerous women come face-to-face with each other and it’s not certain who will walk away.

Wow….just wow.  This was an incredibly dense story and I don’t think I like it much.  The world building is intense but badly fragmented; it was difficult to envision how the cities moved on the Grass Sea or even what the Grass Sea actually was.  The three women plus Jian and several more they encountered in the story use some kind of magic to give them miraculous abilities but this magic was insufficiently explained.  The climax of the story was the battle of the three women but I was unable to discern if there was anything of significance to the battle.  The book wound up with each of the three women limping away to lick their wounds.  Qisami is still looking for the Hero and she has acquired someone who should be able to help her.  Taishi now understands how and why the prophecy failed but the knowledge doesn’t seem to be of interest to anyone else.  Salminde rejoined her people on their exodus back to the Grass Sea but no one bothered to illustrate just how they planned to survive much less fight back when the Zhuun come to reclaim their indentured servants.

This was a very ambitious project for any writer; and while this one is no novice (and I’ve loved some of his other work) I just have to say that I think he bit off more than he could chew.  It was challenging just for me to try to summarize the plot; it really did wander about a bit.  And I can’t quite say how or why…but the story and the characters were uninteresting and flat for me.  I think it was the plot.  I could tell it was intricately plotted with the three women’s fates bringing them together but there was too much unexplained detail that distracted me both for details that were completely unimportant but also for those that I needed to get a clear picture in my head of this world.  And I still can’t quite see the point of this story other than to lay groundwork for the next novels.  Groundwork should not take over 500 pages with no cathartic resolution for the reader.

All that being said, the book is competently written and anyone with a strong taste for martial arts might get more out of it than I did.  ~~  Catherine Book

For more titles by Wesley Chu, click here