This has been a reading blog for the most part and a dormant blog for a while, and now it will be a writing blog. Today I sent a synopsis and three chapters of my novel to Text Publishing, who happily accept unsolicted manuscripts. I don’t know much about Text but I checked their website out and it looks pretty legit. I had been dreading trying to go through the agonising and seemingly endless process of submitting manuscripts to publishers and agents, but now it seems I have no choice. Anyway, here is my synopsis for The Kingdom of Four Rivers. I hadn’t written a synopsis before so I’m not sure if I did it properly. I did my best though….
Synopsis for The Kingdom of Four Rivers
The Kingdom of Four Rivers is a science fiction novel set several hundred years into the future. It is somewhat reminiscent of the work of SF authors Philip K. Dick and J. G. Ballard, but it has also been influenced by literary writers. The basic premise is that several hundred years into the future, humankind has been devastated by climate change and war. Human civilisation is mostly restricted to communities living beneath great shields erected hundred of years previously. The novel is set in a fictional province called the Kingdom of Four Rivers, which is loosely based on a province of China. The book itself has a Chinese bent in terms of character and place names, focusing on a trader family by the name of Chen. There are three parts told from the perspective of three main characters, Ji Tao, Kai Sen and Liang. Each part consists of five chapters and the manuscript is 86,000 words in total.
A concept crucial to understanding this novel is that of the shields themselves. There are three main cities in the Kingdom of Four Rivers (Zhenghe, Baitang and Luihang), but only two of them are visited by viewpoint characters in the course of the novel. Each of these cities is covered by a massive shield which regulates the environment inside and protects the inhabitants from the effects of climate change. Furthermore, each city is divided into an Inner Shield and Outer Shield. The Inner is not seen until chapter nine, more than half way through the novel, and the Outer is not a city so much as a semi-rural farming precinct. The Chens themselves are farmers, traders and inhabitants of the Outer Shield. Although they consider themselves to be moderately wealthy they are quite impoverished by the standards of our own time. These three zones: Inner Shield, Outer Shield, and outside the shields, provide a variety of templates for the setting of The Kingdom of Four Rivers.
Part One tells the story of how the Chens travel from Baitang to the neighbouring city of Luihang, through a jungle whose inhabitants have descended into primitive barbarism. It is told from the perspective of Ji Tao, a young woman who dreams of escaping her repressive existence. The Chens’ goods are basic, their means of transportation (gaur drawn caravans) primitive. Over the course of the journey, Ji Tao’s uncle Tuan tells stories of the old times, which helps to give the reader context as to how the world has changed in the interim. The first of these stories is the novel’s prologue, which explains the coming of the ‘The Great Thief.’ The idea is that the Chens and others like them believe that climate change was brought about by Nature as a means of punishing humankind.
Upon reaching Luihang, the Chens learn that the future of their trading business is on uncertain ground due to the economic policies of the city’s administrator. Concurrently, a prospector named Bao Min offers the Chens the opportunity to loot the ancestral capital of Shulao, the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the old kingdom. Once the regional capital, Shulao is now a broken, overgrown ruin of a city beneath a shattered shield. Upon reaching Shulao, the Chens are forced to flee from scavengers into an old office tower, where they come across a cyronics facility. The mostly moribund facility houses hundreds of ‘sleepers,’ many of which have long since perished. Part One ends with Ji Tao opening one of the capsules. In Part One we are introduced to most of the novel’s main characters, but rather than try to explain who they are here I have included a page of character names and their relationship with one another in the submitted manuscript.
Part Two is narrated from the point of view of Kai Sen, the sleeper. Having awoken from a slumber of centuries, Kai Sen battles the twin spectres of a broken world before him and the prospect of his impending death. Kai Sen had originally been encapsulated due to a terminal illness, and in this century the technology to cure him does not appear to exist. Through Kai Sen’s eyes we bear witness to the aftermath of the destruction of the industrial world. Kai Sen and the Chens return to Luihang, where Kai Sen is heralded as a minor celebrity. Increasingly debilitated by his illness, Kai Sen hopes to win favour with the powers that be in order to obtain medical treatment, but his condition continues to deteriorate enroute to Baitang, the home of the Chens.
During the journey, Kai Sen is plagued by dreams of his past. On arrival in Baitang, Kai Sen is unexpectedly arrested by the Inner Shield Authority. He is taken to Baitang Inner Shield, which he (and the reader) are surprised to learn is a futuristic city, far removed from the comparative poverty experienced by the Chens and others like them. Kai Sen is taken to the Aurica, a strange hotel where he is ‘ported in’ to a virtual reality from which he finds it difficult to escape. Here the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds become blurred. In the final chapter of Part Two, Kai Sen finally meets Silex, the administrator of Baitang. What follows is a far-reaching conversation concerning the fate of the world and that of Kai Sen’s own family. Silex offers Kai Sen a position as propagandist, which Kai Sen is left mulling over at the end of Part Two.
Part Three is told from Liang’s perspective, although several chapters also include transcripts of conversations between Silex and Kai Sen. This section opens with news that Kai Sen is alive, and that he will be speaking at a conference called the Autumn Symposium. Liang, Ji Tao and Sovann attend the Symposium, and are dismayed to discover that Kai Sen has become the puppet of Silex’s regime. Kai Sen does, however, acknowledge the Chen family as being his saviours and protectors. Kai Sen then diverges from the script, inciting the people of the Outer Shield to revolt against their oppressors. He is quickly silenced by armed guards who move in to quell the angry mob. Liang, Ji Tao and Sovann escape the Symposium before the arrests and shootings begin, and return to Tuan’s farm to beg him to flee Baitang. He declines, but allows Liang, Ji Tao and Sovann to go to Luihang. They plan to stay with friends until the unrest is over.
Attempting to flee Baitang, Liang, Ji Tao and Sovann are unwittingly drawn into an armed conflict at the city’s west gate, in which several people are killed. They flee into the jungle toward Luihang. Before reaching the city, Liang and the others are astonished to discover that they are being pursued by none other than Ji Tao’s brother Cheng, who has been co-opted by the Inner Shield Authority. They decide to flee to Shulao, as the authorities are likely waiting for them in Luihang. On the way, Liang is almost drowned in a river crossing and Sovann goes missing. His leg badly injured, Liang relies on Ji Tao’s single minded determination to reach Shulao. Ji Tao’s plan is to return to the Cryonics facility to hide and perhaps to enter cryo-sleep herself. Unfortunately two groups, one led by Bao Min and the other by Cheng, have already arrived at the facility. Cheng has arrived by helicopter, by which he plans to transport the surviving sleepers back to Baitang. The novel’s climax, in Chapter Fourteen, sees Bao Min and Cheng killed (the latter at his sister Ji Tao’s hand) and Ji Tao and Liang victorious. They awaken the remaining sleepers and return by way of the helicopter to Baitang, hoping to negotiate for their own safety.
Arrested on arrival, Liang and Ji Tao are taken to Silex, who rather than punishing them for their exploits offers them a job, similar as he did Kai Sen and Cheng. The incentive offered is that the Chens would be able to move from the squalor of the Outer Shield to the luxury of the Inner, but Liang and Ji Tao would become Silex’s operatives. Liang is eager to accept the offer but Ji Tao declines, incurring Silex’s ire. Rather than punishing them, Silex returns them to their home under the threat of close scrutiny. Liang and Ji Tao arrive home exhausted to find that the unrest is over, with the main perpetrators crushed. In the novel’s epilogue, Sovann, who had been presumed drowned, unexpectedly returns from incarceration in Zhenghe. At novel’s end, Liang and Sovann plan to marry and to build the best life they can in the limited circumstances available to them.
The Kingdom of Four Rivers is part science fiction, part literary novel. I have attempted at all times to entertain the reader, and as such the excitement and tension ratchets up markedly as the novel progresses. Much work in establishing the characters and setting is done in Parts One and Two, and Part Three is a high paced pursuit that propels the reader to the novel’s conclusion. I believe that, if published, The Kingdom of Four Rivers would appeal to readers of both science fiction and literary fiction.
