Song of The Silk Road by Minmei Yip... As a girl growing up in Hong Kong, Lily Lin was captivated by photographs of the desert - its long, lonely vistas and shifting sand dunes. Now living in New York, Lily is struggling to finish her graduate degree when she receives an astonishing offer. An aunt she never knew existed will pay Lily a huge sum to travel across China's desolate Taklamakan Desert - and carry out a series of tasks along the way. Intrigued, Lily accepts. Her assignments range from the dangerous to the bizarre. Lily must seduce a monk. She must scrape a piece of clay from the famous Terracotta Warriors, and climb the Mountains of Heaven to gather a rare herb...What would you do if someone offered you three million dollars to go on an adventure? Lily Lin was suspicious, but also a poor struggling writer, so she decided to pack her bags and escape. Her life in New York was a tedious low paying job, a married lover and frustration over writing her "novel of a lifetime", so China's infamous Silk Road was a dream come true for her. And what an adventure it was!
In Song of The Silk Road, Mingmei Yip seduces you by painting such an exotic landscape, and whisking you off with Lily Lin into a world filled with mysterious potions and whispers of legends. The novel feels contemporary, with modern day problems and situations, and Lily herself is a bit jaded. But there's a quality to the story, with references to Chinese superstitions and sayings that turns the contemporary into more "traditional".
"In good fortune is always some misfortune, and in misfortune, always some good fortune."
Song of the Silk Road will seduce you with its' exotic landscape, and Mingmei Yip can almost have you feel the sand between your toes, but it is the characters that fill those pages that will have you feverishly reading... Alex, the young vibrant traveler, who saves Lily Lin on more than one occasion and becomes her lover, the herbalist Nop Lor, who mourns the ghosts of his past and who Lily will ultimately set free from his guilt, The Monk who isn't as chaste as one would think, and the village that becomes home and the villagers that become almost family. Each of these people and places play an important part of Lily's journey to the end - and to the money. The predicaments that Lily Lin finds herself in and how she gets her self out of them is also a fun part of the story. And what a twist at the end!
If you love stories filled with adventure in exotic places, a bit of romance and wonderful writing, you need to add Song of The Silk Road to your wish list! I could not put this book down! It's Bridgett Jones Diary meets Memoirs of a Geisha.
Song of The Silk Road is available right now at your local bookstore! Would you like a chance to win a copy?! Courtesy of Kensington Publishing I am giving away one copy of Song of The Silk Road to one lucky Chick with Books reader! Here's how to enter...
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This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents only (No PO boxes). The books will be shipped to the winners directly from the publisher. Contest ends 11:59pm EST on May 3rd, 2011. I will randomly pick the winners the next day and email them! Good Luck!
