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A spellbinding new work from the author of "Across the Nightingale Floor"
An ambitious warrior leaves his nephew for dead and seizes his lands. A stubborn father forces his younger son to give up his wife to his older brother. A woman of the Old People seeks five fathers for her five children, the Spider Tribe, born from cocoons. A powerful priest trains a young disciple, Shikanoko, who has been made a sorcerer against his will. An intricate tapestry has been woven for two rival clans to enter a savage battle over who will be crowned Emperor of the Eight Islands. In an extraordinary story seething with intrigue, adventure and love, Lian Hearn masterfully brings to life a mythical Japanese world inhabited by assassins, ghosts, spirits, deer and monkeys.

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