Filial Devotion

by Jess Nevins

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Entry - this eBook is a sample of the first 3,000-5,000 words; it is not the full book. The ABNA contest is operated on Amazon.com only. Visit this entry on Amazon.com to leave customer feedback. To vote for the Grand Prize winner starting July 8, visit www.amazon.com/ABNA. What’s a good Confucian to do? Li Xuan, merchant captain of Guangzhou, is on the verge of a trade voyage to the Great Western City when his father’s ghost is stolen—and by the eunuch Hai-yin Ts’ai, whose power and sorcery is unmatched along the Chinese coast. Hai-yin Ts’ai wants one possession of Li Xuan’s fabulous ship, the Divine Rat, and Hai-yin Ts’ai has stooped as low as holding hostage the ghosts of Li Xuan’s father, wife, and daughter. What’s a proper Confucian supposed to do, when confronted with a situation like that? The answer, of course, is whatever he has to do, to recover the lost souls. If that means battling insane alchemists or the wicked monks of the No-Buddha Monastery, so be it. If that means going to sea and fighting pirates, dodging dragons, and enduring attacks by demons out of myth, so be it. Li Xuan is a good Confucian, and is willing to do what must be done. Fortunately, Li Xuan has friends to help the female monk He Yufeng, the Taoist priest Master Zhang, and the sorcerer I-Tsing Chu, as well as the faithful crew of the Divine Rat, both sailors and the female Marines. Li Xuan will need all of their help and more as the mystery behind the violation of his father’s ghost deepens, and he discovers that Hai-yin Ts’ai is only a servant of the God of Perversion, who has taken a personal interest in Li Xuan and the Divine Rat. To retrieve the souls of his father, wife, and daughter, Li Xuan will be forced to travel into Hell and even fight the God of Perversion himself....

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