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Sands of the Floating World: Where longing is forbidden and freedom has a price
In a world where silence carries weight and nature whispers truths, Sands of the Floating World tells the intertwined stories of Aika, a river village girl sold into Kyoto’s floating world, and Kai, a desert-raised orphan guided by the wind and the wisdom of his Falconer guardian. Each raised in vastly different landscapes, they are connected by a mysterious crane-shaped hairpin—a symbol of promise, freedom, and fate.
Aika, marked as strange for listening to stones and hearing the river’s song, is thrust from poverty into the elegant yet suffocating life of a geisha. Trained to be silent and beautiful, she is poised to become the favored companion of Lord Kitamura, a powerful but emotionally distant emissary seeking solace after personal tragedy. Beneath her powdered exterior, Aika yearns to choose her own destiny.
Kai, shaped by the shifting sands and starlit nights of the desert, inherits a dying man’s final plea and a crane hairpin meant for someone waiting in Kyoto. Guided by wind and memory, Kai journeys across mountains, rivers, and into the heart of a city where every step is watched. His arrival disrupts the quiet path laid for Aika.
Their chance meeting ignites an unspoken understanding—two listeners who see the world differently, and each other more clearly than anyone ever has. As the Hanami Banquet nears, Aika faces the ultimate choice between submission and self-determination, while Kai wrestles with what it means to fulfill a promise that may cost them both dearly.
Lyrical, meditative, and steeped in sensory detail, the novel explores themes of freedom, fate, and quiet rebellion, set against the backdrop of Japan’s rigid social structures and the poetic duality of desert and river, sand and silk.
Aika, marked as strange for listening to stones and hearing the river’s song, is thrust from poverty into the elegant yet suffocating life of a geisha. Trained to be silent and beautiful, she is poised to become the favored companion of Lord Kitamura, a powerful but emotionally distant emissary seeking solace after personal tragedy. Beneath her powdered exterior, Aika yearns to choose her own destiny.
Kai, shaped by the shifting sands and starlit nights of the desert, inherits a dying man’s final plea and a crane hairpin meant for someone waiting in Kyoto. Guided by wind and memory, Kai journeys across mountains, rivers, and into the heart of a city where every step is watched. His arrival disrupts the quiet path laid for Aika.
Their chance meeting ignites an unspoken understanding—two listeners who see the world differently, and each other more clearly than anyone ever has. As the Hanami Banquet nears, Aika faces the ultimate choice between submission and self-determination, while Kai wrestles with what it means to fulfill a promise that may cost them both dearly.
Lyrical, meditative, and steeped in sensory detail, the novel explores themes of freedom, fate, and quiet rebellion, set against the backdrop of Japan’s rigid social structures and the poetic duality of desert and river, sand and silk.
77 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2025
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