River of Stars
core novel 2013 Under Heaven / River of Stars
Record
| First published | 2013 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.17 (8,126 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780451416094 |
Synopsis
River of Stars is set in Kitai, a fantasy realm modeled on twelfth-century Song-dynasty China, in an era when the empire's military has declined and its northern territories have been lost to steppe tribes, pushing its effective border south of the old Long Wall. Ren Daiyan, born to a humble clerk's family, teaches himself swordsmanship and rises from bandit leader to military officer through a series of fortunate encounters, while Lin Shan, an unusually well-educated woman and poet, gains entry to imperial court circles after meeting the exiled poet Lu Chen and becomes a favored figure there. First published in 2013, River of Stars belongs to the River of Stars series.
Where it sits
- Universe: Under Heaven / River of Stars
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Guy Gavriel Kay
Awards (verified)
- Copper Cylinder Award, 2014: won; Corroborated by 2 independent sources (Wikipedia, sfadb); the award's own administering body's site (the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association) was not reached directly.
- Locus Award (Best Fantasy Novel), 2014: finalist; 4th place per sfadb's own chronology (the no-cutoff Locus-poll convention).
- Aurora Award (Long-Form Work in English), 2014: nominated
- Sunburst Award (Adult), 2014: nominated
Notes
- Standalone historical fantasy (Roc, April 2013) set in the same fictional empire of Kitai as Kay's own Under Heaven, roughly 400-500 years later, but telling a wholly independent story with no shared characters or plot -- exactly the possible future companion admission Under Heaven's own notes flagged. Registered as its own single-work universe rather than folded into Under Heaven, per the same-world-independent-story pattern already established for Bas-Lag's standalone novels.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within Under Heaven / River of Stars (standalone work): position 2 of 2: previous Under Heaven (2010)
Sources
← Under Heaven / River of Stars dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.