The Silkworm's Inheritance

About this book

In an alternate 1582 Ming Dynasty where alchemists engineered living silk to forge biological castes, sixteen-year-old Leaf-laborer Suyin scrapes survival among Suzhou’s riverside dye-vats while her grandmother wastes from an engineered rot that targets the lowest tier. When Suyin uncovers a hidden journal written in a recursive code that mimics silk-protein sequences, she learns her bloodline was never meant to remain Leaf—and that her blood itself may be a living key to the empire’s woven hierarchy. Hunted through canal cities and mountain monasteries by Silkborn assassins, pressed by a Mulberry-caste weaver with mercenary ambitions, and reluctantly entangled with a Silkborn prince whose perfect memory cannot explain why her family was erased, Suyin is forced to weigh desperate self-preservation against a choice that could free millions or kill thousands whose bodies depend on the system. Across three braided timelines—the present flight, her grandmother’s youth forty years earlier, and the founding decision eighty years past—the novel traces inherited trauma, caste violence, and the incompatible prices of survival and justice.

Book details

Genres:

Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopian, Biopunk

Language:

en

Published:

2026-07-20

Content rating:

R