A Magic Steeped in Poison

“I used to look at my hands with pride.

Now, all I can think is, These are the hands that buried my mother.”

The novel opens with Ning, the protagonist and narrator, musing on her deeply conflicted feelings about her hands. The scene is designed to invoke an immediate sense of tension while also underscoring one of the crucial emotional conflicts of the novel. At this early juncture, the opening sentence does not yet clarify how Ning is involved in the tragedy of her mother’s death and how profoundly the circumstances will affect her own life.

“Even when Mother was alive, even when I was happy in the gardens with my family, I always felt like I was orbiting them, occupying a similar space but charting my own invisible course, with no idea where it would take me.

Maybe I’m about to find out.”

As Ning rides the ferry to leave her province, she reflects on her feelings of loneliness and realizes that this inner sense was always with her, even among her village and family. Combined with other descriptions that label her something of a “troublemaker”—or more charitably, a strong and willful young woman who is not afraid to speak her mind honestly—Ning realizes that she has always felt like an outsider. She now hopes that her journey will take her someplace where she feels like she belongs.

“‘Is she? I’m more interested to know if she has truly survived a hundred assassination attempts,’ Bo says. ‘Some say the princess has a talisman that can guard her from ill will, or a stone that cures all illness, gifted by the mysterious shennong-shi who saved her father’s life.’”

In Ning’s first encounter with Bo/Kang, he intrigues her with this rumor about a talisman that can heal all illnesses. Although this rumor proves to be false, his offhand comment also represents a slyly inserted form of