A Magic Steeped in Poison

Zhang Ning is the protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. She is a young woman who lives with her father and with her younger sister, Shu, who is dying of poison. Her mother has recently died from this same poison, which was ingested in poisoned tea that Ning herself inadvertently served to her. Although the tea was poisoned by an unknown agitator across the country, Ning still blames herself for her mother’s death because she is the one who brewed it. Ning believes that she should have known something was wrong with the stock because she has been trained by her mother, a shennong-shi (magical tea master). When neither Ning nor her physician father can find an antidote to save Shu, Ning runs away to enter a contest at the palace; this contest is designed to identify the next royal Shennong-shi. If she wins, she hopes to secure a cure for her sister. Like her mother, she possesses the innate magic necessary to use tea as a basis for magic. Over the course of the novel, she discovers that she possesses stronger magic than even she was aware of.

Ning is an outsider among the villagers and has always been known as a troublemaker.