Lydia Kwa

The Walking Boy is a quest novel set in early eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, in the final days of the rule of the first female Emperor Wu Zhao. The ailing hermit monk, Harelip, sends his disciple Baoshi on a pilgrimage from Mount Hua to Chang'an, the Western capital. Baoshi is the 'walking boy' charged with locating Harelip's missing former lover,...

Life in seventh-century China teems with magic, fox spirits, and demons; there is a fervent belief that the extraordinary resides within the lives of both commoners and royalty. During the years when the empress Wu Zhao gains ascendancy in the Tang court, her evil-minded lover Xie becomes obsessed with finding and possessing the oracle bone, a magical object that will...