"Mainstream Fantasy"

That's what this book has been called - a historical fantasy which takes place in a land which might, in a lot of ways, be Imperial China... but is not.

"Jin shei" is a sacred vow of sisterhood that binds the women of the kingdom of Syai - a vow in the name of which anything may be asked, and must be attempted - and of nine young women who are part of a group sharing this vow. They range from a Princess gone before her time, who started the circle; a poet who holds them all together as the calm center of their universe; a healer who balanced compassion with ambition; a crippled washerwoman's daughter who rises to one of the highest positions in the land; a fiercely brilliant and incurably curious scholar whose dabblings in dark alchemy lead her down a dangerous path of self-destruction; a half-breed gypsy dancer who has the misfortune to also be an Emperor's by-blow; a child born only as revenge for the fact of that gypsy girl's existence; a warrior who held honour more dear than life itself; and a glittering and ambitious Empress whose demand for immortality brings all of them close to destruction.

Now out in English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, German, Dutch, Czech, Turkish,Lithuanian and Portuguese - finalist for the Washington State Book Awards in 2005 and nominated for UK's prestigious Orange Prize in the same year, critics have called it "lyrical", "powerful", "full of drama and insight".

The follow-up to "The Secrets of Jin Shei", entitled "Embers of Heaven", has just been released in paperback in the UK.

Learn more about Alma Alexander's work at her website, http://www.AlmaAlexander.com, or come and meet the author on her LiveJournal blog at http://anghara.livejournal.com