The Emperor's Prey

Series #1

by Jeremy Han

China, 1420: The Emperor Yongle never forgot that eighteen years ago he failed to kill the man whose throne he usurped. Fearful of revenge, he sends the Eastern Depot to conclude the bloody episode but the fugitive has disappeared into the vastness of the Ming Empire. The ruthless head of the Eastern Depot has never failed before. Can he find a man lost in the mist of time and kill him? With time against him, a powerful network protecting the lost emperor, and an escape plan beyond his imagination, this mission could be his downfall. Déjà vu. Zhao Qi is summoned to rescue the fugitive emperor again after delivering him to safety eighteen years ago. This time, his teammates have a different agenda. Can he trust them with his life and the emperor's as they play cat-and-mouse with the empire's deadliest assassins? Based on the mystery surrounding the fate of the Jianwen Emperor after the civil war of 1402, The Emperor's Prey is a story of loyalty between friends, courage to love and freedom from injustice.

Genres: China

582 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2012

Reviews

[Steven McKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've really enjoyed this book. It's different to any other historical fiction I've read, being based in China and often it reads like an 80's martial arts movie (which is no bad thing, they knew how to make a good movie in the 80's!).
The characters are interesting, the plot exciting and wonderfully researched and overall it's just a great read.
I don't have much time to read these days so long books like this are hard for me to get through. In my opinion the author should split this into two books and sell them for half the price.
Overall though, if you're looking for something that isn't Roman or medieval then you should check this out.

[L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A doable adventure yarn set in China during the Ming Dynasty. The Emperor doesn't feel secure on his Dragon Throne. He sends out his secret police, known as the Eastern Depot, to hunt down the one man the emperor sees as a threat. Our band of heroes set out to thwart these plans.

I was rather bemused by the Eastern Depot's skewered ethics. They use torture and murder to get their way but when one of them rapes a woman they're clutching their pearls. You can disembowel her husband and execute her child in front of her but you do not rape a woman. The Eastern Depot are handing out massacres left and right but they draw the line at cannibalism. They'll kill you but they won't eat you, because that's just wrong.

[Elaina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I haven't finished the book yet (68% read of the Kindle edition), I've already decided that while the book premise is very interesting, there is way too much detail about the fighting styles of the characters each time a conflict occurs. The author couldn't seem to make up his mind whether the book was historical fiction or a treatise on the various styles of martial arts fighting skills. The end result is that the book is probably 30% longer than it needed to be in order to relate the story. I enjoyed reading the book up until a bit past the 50% mark...now I'm just plodding on until the end because, like many here, once I've read this far I feel compelled to finish. I hope I won't feel I've completely wasted my time when I do finish. There are quite a few grammatical errors which I initially excused since the author doesn't live in the U.S. Then I discovered that he is a "former English, History and Social Studies teacher" according to his Amazon bio, which in hindsight make these errors inexcusable. So many of these Kindle books are self-published and the end result is that no one bothers to proof read or edit them. Grammatical and spelling errors tend to spoil my enjoyment of any book.

I find the plethora of characters and the similarily in names to be somewhat confusing and have difficulty remembering exactly who is who, although I chalk most of that up to cultural differences. I am enjoying the details about the way the various classes of people live and the occasional references to Buddhist philosopy.

I got this book for free and chose it because the subject matter sounded interesting, and it is. I think with a good job of editing and much less detail about martial art specifics it just might end up being an excellent historical novel. The author released a sequel on March 10, 2015, "The Prison of Fate". I hope the editing in the sequel has improved because this author has great potential.

http://www.amazon.com/Prisoner-Fate-S...

[Hock Leng Puah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting Gong Fu novel with a twist in history related to Zheng He.