The empire of Tensha is on the brink. Famine has raged for nearly a generation, gutting poor families as the elite continue to live in opulence. Wei Yin has lost five siblings and doesn’t want to have to bury her only remaining brother. In her desperation to secure a future for her family, she offers herself as a concubine to the volatile crown prince. While Wei knows the rumors of Prince Terren’s cruelty, she’s unprepared for the reality of his rage. As she learns more about her new home at court, Wei begins to understand the true disaster that Terren’s rule would be. In an act of rebellion, Wei bribes her scribe to teach her how to read and write—dangerous tools in a world where magic is channeled through verse. Armed with her new skill, Wei begins to contemplate what it would mean to write a poem that could kill Terren and set her free. But a spell that powerful requires its writer not to simply hate their target, but to know and love them well enough to understand exactly why they must die.
In her debut novel, The Poet Empress, Shen Tao paints a painful picture of the sacrifices Wei makes as she transforms from a desperate peasant to the wife of the most powerful man in the empire. Secluded in her pavilion, Wei must accept that there are no handsome, kind princes waiting to save her. There is only the reality of court politics and the certainty that even in the opulence of the palace there is always someone waiting to kill you. There’s no solace in partnership, either. Terren is truly a monster, not a morally gray love interest. His irredeemable nature makes one of Tao’s greatest feats within The Poet Empress even more remarkable. Through flashbacks and small moments, Tao manages to show us the small, scared boy inside the man. While this will never redeem Terren, it complicates Wei’s choice, forcing her to compromise her own morals and understanding of the world. To survive long enough to complete her spell, Wei must be as ruthless as her tyrant husband, teaching her that not all monsters are born: Some are made. Through her evocative storytelling and deep understanding of character, Shen Tao creates a world both terrible and wonderful in The Poet Empress that will enrapture readers even as it horrifies them.