Xianqui

Raghu Srinivasan

Year: 2019. The world is falling apart.

The temperamental President of the United States of America, facing a tough re-election and playing to populist voter sentiment, has imposed trade sanctions on a belligerent China. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens, reeling from a disastrous economic meltdown, have taken to the streets in revolt.

Staring at the bleak prospect of being ousted from power after 60 years of iron rule in the wake of threats both external and internal, the leaders of the Communist Party in China initiate military action, drawing its rival superpowers Japan and the United States into a conflict that portends an all-out nuclear war. As nations across the globe switch to emergency mode, Japanese intelligence reveals that China’s aggression could have been fuelled by a singular circumstance: the development of a vaccine based on ancient tribal knowledge that could tilt military balance in its favour.

But what is this secret weapon China possesses and how can it be stopped? The fate of the world now rests on the success of a quest undertaken by an eclectic team – a Japanese policewoman, an Indian ethnologist and a young Indian mountain guide, assisted in part by a devious Russian geologist – to unravel the only clue they have at hand, buried in a fable from a time long past, when the magic of the shamans guided the rulers of Tibet.

Will they succeed? Or will the Chinese foil their attempts and trigger the ultimate, apocalyptic war?