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Amélie Wen Zhao

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom) Hardcover – January 3, 2023

by Amélie Wen Zhao (Author)

4.4 355 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Song of the Last Kingdom

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In a fallen kingdom, one girl carries the key to discovering the secrets of her nation's past—and unleashing the demons that sleep at its heart. An epic fantasy series inspired by the mythology and folklore of ancient China.

"Perfect for fans of The Untamed. I loved it!” —Shelley Parker-Chan, bestselling author of She Who Became the Sun

Once, Lan had a different name. Now she goes by the one the Elantian colonizers gave her when they invaded her kingdom, killed her mother, and outlawed her people’s magic. She spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the conquerors, and her days scavenging for what she can find of the past. Anything to understand the strange mark burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.

The mark is mysterious—an untranslatable Hin character—and no one but Lan can see it. Until the night a boy appears at her teahouse and saves her life.

Zen is a practitioner—one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. Their magic was rumored to have been drawn from the demons they communed with. Magic believed to be long lost. Now it must be hidden from the Elantians at all costs.

When Zen comes across Lan, he recognizes what she is: a practitioner with a powerful ability hidden in the mark on her arm. He’s never seen anything like it—but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.

Both Lan and Zen have secrets buried deep within—secrets they must hide from others, and secrets that they themselves have yet to discover. Fate has connected them, but their destiny remains unwritten. Both hold the power to liberate their land. And both hold the power to destroy the world.

Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.

Book 1 of 2

Song of the Last Kingdom
Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Delacorte Press
Publication date

January 3, 2023
Grade level

9 and up
Reading age

14 - 17 years
Dimensions

5.81 x 1.39 x 8.56 inches
ISBN-10

0593487508
ISBN-13

978-0593487501
Lexile measure

870L
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From the Publisher

An epic fantasy series inspired by the mythology and folklore of ancient China

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Devastatingly gorgeous.” —Chloe Gong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights

“The perfect book for fans of the Chinese xianxia fantasy genre.” —The Nerd Daily

“A rich fantasy world of high stakes and adventure.”—BuzzFeed

“A lush, magical tale.” —Paste

★ “Lush worldbuilding and gorgeous visuals." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A complex and fantastic introduction to an epic new world." —Kirkus Reviews

"A well-rounded and interesting fantasy." —Booklist

“A thrilling and wonderful first start into the many possibilities of the myths and legends of ancient China.”—Asia Pacific Arts

“An epic, masterfully rendered tale of reckoning and heritage that draws its readers into a world as rich as it is nuanced, and as intriguing as it is magical.” —Ayana Gray, New York Times bestselling author of Beasts of Prey

“Prepare to stay up all night!” —Sara Raasch, New York Times bestselling author of the Snow Like Ashes series

“Gorgeous, evocative, and thrilling. I absolutely loved it.” — Katherine Webber, author of Twin Crowns

“Brims with pure magic. Zhao has woven together a story of self-discovery, slow-burning romance, and heart-pounding revelations.” —Rebecca Ross, internationally bestselling author of A River Enchanted

“A captivating epic fantasy... I can’t wait for the sequel!”— Sue Lynn Tan, bestselling author of Daughter of the Moon Goddess

”A haunting tale steeped in myth and legend. This is a story that will captivate and spellbind readers until the very end.”—Francesca Flores, author of Diamond City

“A magical tale set in a glittering, dangerous world featuring a dynamic heroine and an enigmatic hero.” —Isabel Ibañez, author of Together We Burn

About the Author

Amélie Wen Zhao was born in Paris and grew up in Beijing, where she spent her days reenacting tales of legendary heroes, ancient kingdoms, and lost magic at her grandmother’s courtyard house. She attended college in the United States and now resides in New York City, working as a finance professional by day and fantasy author by night. In her spare time, she loves to travel and spend time with her family in China, where she’s determined to walk the rivers and lakes of old just like the practitioners in her novels do. Amélie is the author of the Blood Heir trilogy—Blood Heir, Red Tigress, and Crimson Reign—as well as Song of Silver, Flame Like Night.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Power is always borrowed, never created.

-- Dào’zǐ, Book of the Way (Classic of Virtues), 1.1

Elantian Age, Cycle 12

The Black Port, Haak’gong

The Last Kingdom had been brought to its knees, but the view was mighty fine from here.

Lan tipped her bamboo hat over her head, parting her lips in pleasure as the cool evening breeze combed through strands of her silky black hair. Sweat slicked her neck from the afternoon’s work of hawking wares at the local evemarket, and her back ached with the beating she’d received from Madam Meng for stealing sugarplum candies from the kitchens at the Teahouse. But in rare moments like this, when the sun hung ripe and swollen as a mandarin over the glittering sea, there was still a shattered-glass beauty to be found in the remnants of a conquered land.

The city of Haak’gong unfurled before her in a patchwork of contradictions. Red lanterns were strung from curved temple eave to gray-shingled rooftop, weaving and wending between pagodas and courtyards wreathed in the halo of night bazaars and evening fairs. On the distant hills, the Elantians had settled on higher ground, building their strange architecture of stone, glass, and metal to watch over the Hin like gods. The skyline glowed a dusky auric from their alchemical lamplight that spilled through stained-glass windows and arched marble doorways.

Lan rolled her eyes and turned away. She knew the story of the gods--any gods--to be a big, steaming bowl of turd. Much as the Elantians wished to pretend otherwise, Lan knew they had come to the Last Kingdom for one thing: resources. Ships full of powdered spices and golden grains and verdant tea leaves, chests of silks and samites, jades and porcelains, left Haak’gong for the Elantian Empire, across the Sea of Heavenly Radiance, each day.

And whatever was left over trickled into the black markets of Haak’gong.

At this bell, the evemarket was in full bloom, merchants having filed in along the Jade Trail with jewels that gleamed like the light of the sun, spices tasting of lands Lan had never seen before, and fabrics that shimmered like the night sky itself. Haak’gong’s heartbeat was the clink of coin, its lifeblood the flow of trade, its bones the wooden stalls of marketplaces. It was a place of survival.

Lan paused at the very end of the market. She took care to lower her dǒu’lì--her bamboo hat--over her face lest any Elantian officials prowled nearby. What she was about to do could very well earn her a spot on the gallows, along with other Hin who had broken Elantian laws.

With a surreptitious glance around, she crossed the street and made for the slums.

This was where the illusion of the Last Kingdom ended and the reality of a conquered land began. Here the cobblestone streets carefully constructed by the Elantians after the Conquest faded to dust; the elegantly renovated facades and shiny glass windows gave way to buildings crumbling from disrepair.

The trading house sat in a derelict corner, its cheap wooden doors chipped and faded with time, paper windows patched with grease yet sagging with the humidity of the south. A wooden bell tinkled somewhere overhead as Lan stepped inside.

She shut the doors, and the hubbub of the outside world fell silent.

The interior was dim, dust motes swirling in the late-afternoon sunlight that spilled onto cracked floorboards and shelves crammed with an assortment of scrolls, tomes, and trinkets. The entire shop looked like an old painting left to fade in the sun, smelling of ink and damp wood.

But this was Lan’s favorite place in the world. It reminded her of a time long past, a world long gone.

A life wiped from the pages of the history books.

Old Wei’s Pawn Shop dealt in odds and ends of goods left over from the evemarket after the Elantians had their pick, purchased by the shopkeeper at wholesale and sold to Hin buyers at a thin margin. The shop escaped the notice of government inspectors, for secondhand goods held no interest to the colonizers as long as they weren’t made of metal.

This was why the shop had also become a hub for contraband. The wares Old Wei had on display were innocuous enough: reels of wool, hemp, and cotton, jars of star anise and bay leaves, scrolls of cheap paper made from pounded dried bark. But hidden somewhere inside the shop, Lan knew, was something for her.

Something that could cost her life.

“Old Wei,” she called. “I got your message.”

Silence for a moment, and then: “Thought I heard your silver-bells voice. Come to bring me mischief again?”

The old shopkeeper announced himself in a shuffle of feet and a hacking cough. Old Wei had once been a teacher in a northeastern coastal village, before his family was killed and he’d lost everything in the Elantian Conquest twelve cycles ago. He’d fled to Haak’gong and used his literacy to pivot into the trading business. Constant hunger had whittled him to a stick, and the damp air of Haak’gong had afflicted him with a permanent cough. That was the extent of what Lan knew of his life--not even his truename, banned under Elantian law and reduced to a monotonous single syllable.

Lan gave him her sweetest smile from beneath her dǒu’lì. “Mischief?” she repeated, matching his northern dialect, the tones harsher and rolling compared to the sweet, singsong southern tones she’d become used to. It was a rarity to speak either these days. “When have I ever brought you mischief, Old Wei?”

He grunted, casting her an appraising look. “Neverbrought me fortune either. And I still let you come back each time.”

She poked her tongue out. “Must be my charm.”

“Hah,” he said, the word cracking through a thick layer of phlegm. “Any gods watching would know what lies beneath that charm.”

“There are no gods watching.”

It was a point she often liked to debate with Old Wei, who was a stout worshiper of the Hin’s pantheon of gods--in particular, his favorite, the God of Riches. Old Wei liked to tell Lan he’d devoutly prayed to the God of Riches in his childhood. Lan liked to remind him that the God of Riches must have a twisted sense of humor to have rewarded him with a rundown contraband shop.

“There are,” Old Wei replied. Lan raised her eyes heavenward and mouthed the words along with him--words she had heard a hundred times: “There are old gods and new gods, kind gods and fickle gods--and most powerful of them all are the Four Demon Gods.”

Lan preferred not to believe that her fortunes lay in the hands of some invisible old farts in the skies--no matter how powerful they were meant to be. “Whatever you say, Old Wei,” she replied, leaning over the counter and cupping her chin in her hands.

The old shopkeeper wheezed a few times, then asked, “Evemarket again? What, is the Teahouse not feeding you enough?”

They both knew the answer to that: Madam Meng ran the Teahouse like a glass menagerie, and her songgirls were her finest display. She fed them just enough to keep them dewy and ripe for the picking, but never enough so that their bellies grew full--gods forbid they become lazy or fat.

“I like it here,” Lan said, and she did. Out here, hawking alongside other vendors and pocketing the coin she made into herown pockets, was where she felt some semblance of control over her life--a taste of freedom and free will, if only temporary. “Besides,” she added sweetly, “I get to drop by to see you.”

He cast her a shrewd look, then tsked and wagged a finger. “Don’t try your honeyed words on me, ya’tou,” he said, and bent to the cabinets beneath his counter.

Ya’tou. Girl. It was what he’d called her since he’d found her, a scrap of an orphan begging on the streets of Haak’gong. He’d taken her to the only place he’d known that would welcome a girl with no name and no reputation: Madam Meng’s Teahouse. She’d signed a contract whose terms she’d barely been able to decipher, and whose length only seemed to swell and swell the harder she worked.

But at the end of the day, he’d saved her life. Gotten her a job, put a stable roof over her head. It was more kindness than one could ask for in these times.

She grinned at the sour old man. “I would never.”

Old Wei’s grunt turned into a bout of coughing, and Lan’s smile slipped. The winters down in the south had none of the biting cold that she’d grown up with in the northeast. Instead, it encroached with a damp chill that sank into bones and joints and lungs and festered there.

She took in the state of the battered old shop, the shelves that stood fuller than usual. Tonight, on the eve of the big festivities for the Twelfth Cycle of the Elantian Conquest, security had been tightened around Haak’gong, and the first thing people tended to avoid in those circumstances was a shop trading in illicit goods. Lan couldn’t afford to dally either: soon the streets would be crawling with Elantian patrols, and a lone songgirl in their midst was an invitation to trouble.

“Lungs acting up again, Old Wei?” she asked, running a finger over a small stained-glass dragon figurine on the counter--likely a prized trade from one of the Jade Trail nations across the great Emaran Desert. The Hin had not known glass until the era of the Middle Kingdom, under which Emperor Jīn--the Golden Emperor--established formal trade routes reaching all the way west to the fabled deserts of Masyria.

“Ah, yeah,” the shopkeeper said with a wince. From the folds of his sleeve, he drew what must once have been a fine silken handkerchief and patted his mouth with it. The cloth was sodden and graying with grime. “Ginseng prices have shot up since the Elantian farts learned of its healing properties. But I’ve lived with these old bones all my life, and they haven’t killed me yet. Nothing to worry about.”

Lan drummed her fingers on the wooden counter, polished with the comings and goings of so many others before her. Here was the trick to surviving in a colonized land: you couldn’t show that you cared. Every Hin you came across would have his share of sob stories: family slaughtered in the Conquest, home pillaged and plundered, or worse. To care was to allow a chink in the armor of survival.

So Lan asked the question that had been brewing in her chest all day. “Well, what do you have for me?”

Old Wei gifted her a gap-toothed smile and bent beneath his counter. Lan’s pulse began to race; instinctively she pressed fingers to the inside of her left wrist.

There, imprinted into flesh and sinew and blood, was a scar that only she could see: a perfect circle encompassing a character in the shape of a Hin word that she could not read, sweeping strokes blooming like an elegantly balanced flower--blossom, leaves, and stem.

Eighteen cycles she’d lived, and she had spent twelve of those searching for this character--the only clue to her past that her mother had left her before her death. To this day, she could feel the searing heat of her mother’s fingers on her arms, the hole in Mama’s chest bleeding red even as the world erupted in blinding white. The expensive lacquerwood furniture of their study darkened with blood, the air filled with the bitter scent of burnt metal . . . and something else. Something ancient; something impossible.

“Now, I think you’ll like this one.”

She blinked, the images dissipating as Old Wei emerged from the dusty shelves and placed a scroll on the counter between them. Lan held her breath as he unfurled it.

It was a worn piece of parchment, but even with one look, she could tell that it was different: the surface was smooth,unlike the cheap papers made of hemp or rags or fishnet common these days. This was true parchment--vellum,perhaps--singed black in the corners and smudged with age. She’d known the feel of it intimately, once a world ago.

Between the wear and tear, Lan could make out faded traces of opulence. Her eyes raked over the sketches of the Four Demon Gods in the corners of the page, barely visible but present nevertheless: dragon, phoenix, tiger, and tortoise, all facing the center of the scroll, frozen in time. Swirls of painted clouds adorned the top and bottom margins. And then . . .there, in the very center, ensconced within a near-perfect circle: a single character, blooming with the delicate balance of a Hin character, yet with nothing recognizable. Her heart jumped into her throat as she leaned over it, barely breathing.

“I thought you’d be excited,” Old Wei said. He watched her carefully, eyes glinting with the prospect of a sale. “Wait till you hear where I got it.”

She barely heard him. Her pulse thundered in her ears as she traced the strokes of the character, following every line and comparing it to the character she’d memorized well enough to know in her dreams.

Her excitement faltered as her finger stuttered over a stroke. No . . .no. A line cut too short, a dot missing, a diagonal slightly off . . . Minute differences, but all the same--

Wrong.

She slumped, letting out a sigh. Sloppily, she rotated her wrist, finger tracing a loose circle to finish up the character.

That was when it happened.

The air in the shop shifted, and she felt as though something inside her had snapped into place--an invisible current that rushed from her fingertips into the shop. Like a static shock in winter.

It was gone in half a second, so quickly that she must have imagined it. When she blinked again, Old Wei was still watching her with pursed lips. “Well?” he asked eagerly, leaning forward over the counter.

He hadn’t felt it, then. Lan touched the tip of her fingers to her temples. It hadn’t been anything--a momentary lapse in focus, a trick of the nerves, brought on by hunger and exhaustion. “It’s a bit different,” she replied, ignoring the familiar disappointment that curdled in her stomach.

It had been so close . . . and yet it wasn’t.

“Not what you’re looking for, then,” Old Wei said, clearing his throat, “but I think it’s a start. See here--the syllabary seems to be composed in the same style as yours, with those curves and dashes . . . but the circle outside is really what caught my attention.” He tapped two calloused fingers to the page. “Everything we’ve seen with a circle around the character has been there only for decoration. But see how these strokes bleed into the circle? They were written in a conjoined line--a clear beginning and end.”

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Delacorte Press (January 3, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593487508
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593487501
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 - 17 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 870L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.28 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.81 x 1.39 x 8.56 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #40,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Teen & Young Adult Myths & Legends
- #206 in Teen & Young Adult Epic Fantasy
- #547 in Teen & Young Adult Social & Family Issue Fiction

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4.4 355 ratings

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Amélie Wen Zhao

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Amélie Wen Zhao（赵雯）is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the Chinese fantasy Song of Silver, Flame Like Night and the Blood Heir trilogy. She was born in Paris and grew up in Beijing, where she spent her days reenacting tales of legendary heroes, ancient kingdoms, and lost magic at her grandmother’s courtyard house. She attended college in the United States and now resides in New York City, working as a finance professional by day and fantasy author by night. In her spare time, she loves to travel with her family in China, where she’s determined to walk the rivers and lakes of old just like the practitioners in her novels do.

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Tasha Collins

Un -put- down-able

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2023

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This book grabs you at the onset and holds on until you finish it.
It’s original characters tell the history of a complex civilization which mirrors Chinese mythologies. The Last Kingdom, once a world
embued with Nature’s wisdom and magic has been imperiled by its own inner demons ( politics , greedy humans and demon gods ) and then left vulnerable to invasion and conquest by a powerful and cruel invaders whose imperial magicians control and destroy with the power of metals that are deadly to humans.
I can’t wait for the second book coming out in Hanuary of 2024- already paid for and preordered.

Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

This book hit all the high points for me! The writing is luscious and immersive, the story is powerful. I cannot wait to see where it goes next!

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2023

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This captured me from the start. The details made me feel I was right there with Lan and making me look forward to the rest of the story & adventure

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2023

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Song of Silver; Flame like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao
“She would take it. She would no longer be the flower. She would be the blade.”
~~~
Words can’t describe my thoughts for this book. It held so much emotion, so much power. It felt so different as well from her other series Blood Heir Trilogy. I have never watched a K-drama but as I read this; I had one playing out in my head with so much detailing and enthusiasm.
Any person could tell that the setting and plot had a lot of thought going into this. Then for the characters, their chemistry was fantastic. Let’s also not forget the comical side to this book, the banter between the two; I love me so good banter. Along with the slow burn, I turned into a giddy little girl with it sometimes. Sometimes I couldn’t stop smiling even when I wasn’t reading the book, I was thinking of certain parts.
Then the ending broke me, I won’t go into detail. But it broke me, with one line. One scene, I crack like an egg. I stayed up one night till 3am to finish it, thank the gods I didn’t have to work the next day. But I stared into the abyss after that. *insert The Grinch* gif. Just do yourself a favor now. Preorder this book and be prepared to read it in Jan. For some of you, you may need tissues, just a warning.
But thank you Amelie Wen Zhao, Random House Children, Delacorte Press, and the GetUnderlined booth at YALLfest for letting me have access to a physical copy to my favorite author. *side note: yes when I got this in my hands at YALLfest. I cried like a absolute baby. Don’t judge me*

5 people found this helpful

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A. Suen

Fantastic read if you like Asian literature

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2023

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This was a 4 star read for me. I have recently started reading more Asian literature, especially historical Asian literature and fantasy and this book contained both. The magic system used is highly based on a person's qi, so even if you don't fully understand yin and yang, what is great about this book is that it simply explains both so it's not have to imagine how some of the magical scenes are playing out. The way the author describes the magic, it is not hard to imagine people actually being able to do some of the things in real life. It is a fantasy story but not written in a fantastical way. The only thing that I was disappointed about was the cover. While it is a GORGEOUS cover, I was expecting it to have more dragons than it did. The dragon part of the story doesn't even come until the end of the book and it's not even mentioned a lot. So if reading about dragons is your thing this might not be for you. However if Chinese fantasy, history, and mythology stories is than I would definitely recommend this one.

2 people found this helpful

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An author I will always like

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2023

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I loved this book so much this author never disappoints I love these kind of novels it was as good as any other cultivation novel I have ever read I am really looking forward to reading more. The story and the characters are amazing it has so much heart and soul with the best writing I am really looking forward to the sequel. The characters were amazing but I especially loved Lan and Zen most of all. I loved Lan most of all for her tenacious spirit her willingness to say what she thinks with not much filter and how she wants to remove the invaders and her want to fulfill her mother's last wish. What I really liked about Zen is he is strong his protectiveness of Lan his only downfall is how far he would go to end the invaders at the cost of much dear to him. The story was amazingly well written we start with a girl Lan suffering under a terrible invader group and how that is for all of her people. The story then moves on to other not great things happening where she meets Zen other things happening and their escape. So other things happen and she and Zen after a while after she learns cultivation they set out to fulfill her mother's last wish it is fulfilled other bad things happen they escape together he does something he shouldn't of done and now Lan is all the more determined to end the invaders and is willing to almost anything to achieve that looking forward to the sequel.

3 people found this helpful

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Prince J

No dust Jacket

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2023

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It should be indicated that the book has no dust jacket.

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Kindle Customer

Rips the rug out from you with how good it is

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2023

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I know a lot about Chinese fantasy, mythology, and xianxia stories, so when I first started reading this, I thought I knew it all. There were parts that reminded me of Mo Dao Zu Shi, Husky and White Cat Shizun, I even recognized a song reference. It's a great book, great pacing, but I thought there was nothing that could surprise me. And then the ending picked up and absolutely took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. Well-executed, well written. It's good and I'm annoyed I have to wait for the other two books.

3 people found this helpful

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The Mom Reader

Not what I was expecting but not a bad read.

Reviewed in Canada on April 24, 2023

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I am an avid fan of Chinese mythology stories linked to old legends. This story is no different. In all honesty this book was not what I expected but that being said the story is well written, the characters are believable and in most cases genuine. I liked Lan and Zen but didn't like the fixation on demons.

Ganya

Such a beautiful magical story!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

First off I am excited to read the next instalment by the author, the storytelling in this was written in such a beautiful way! I loved reading every minute of this book from start to finish.

Amelie Wen Zhao has created a beautiful, heartbreaking tale of love, revenge, courage and redemption wrapped in adventure and magic.

This book had so much to offer with great banter, slow burn moments to heart-wrenching, the end just broke me and I did not expect to shed a tear for this book. So many great moments and quotes I will be thinking about till the next book! Amelie Wen Zhao thank you for this book and look forward to more.

One person found this helpful

Jenna Patricia Leavitt

Great first book.

Reviewed in Canada on February 22, 2023

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I thought the story was great! I truly enjoyed the pacing and the intriguing plot

Rahi Fakruzzaman

Book arrived damaged

Reviewed in Germany on March 27, 2023

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Books arrived with damaged corners. While it seem minimal, as someone who collects & takes really good care of her books this is quite disappointing.

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Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom) Hardcover – January 3, 2023

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Buy new:

$13.60

FREE delivery: Monday, Oct 2 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$7.81