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“The Hand of the Sun King is about Wen Alder, a young man caught between two worlds. His grandmother comes from a pagan black magic clan in the hills, and his uncle led a rebellion against the empire; so he comes from this rebellious province, and there’s lots of occupying forces trying to keep it all on the level. At the same time, he is tutored in the imperial arts. His father is a merchant, an aspirational upper-middle class merchant, in a very socially stratified society. He hires a tutor for Wen, for what is essentially a college entrance exam – if you can afford it and you’re intelligent enough, you take this test in logic and reasoning and mathematics and philosophy and poetry. It’s a bit like PPE at Oxford, that kind of idea – the medieval Chinese equivalent. And if you pass it, depending how well you do, it puts you in a certain stratum within the imperial civil service. The civil servants have magical powers. They’re like very powerful mages, essentially.” Read more...
