The Emperor and the Endless Palace was, by far and away, my favorite book of 2024. You can imagine, then, my excitement when I found out that Justinian Huang had a second book coming out in 2025. When I saw a social media post that ARCs were out, my little fingers (they’re not actually little, which you all know if you follow me in IG because I complain every five minutes about how big my hands are and yet, they’re not big enough to have the same reach as Freddie Mercury’s so playing Queen on the piano is just hard enough to be annoying and why can’t my hands just pick already) raced to NetGalley to smash “request” and lo, I forgot that Mira was Huang’s publisher and I am auto-approved for Harlequin so I instead I smashed mine and did shrieked for a while.

I know it’s only July-ish but I can assure you that Lucky Seed is going to be in my top five of 2025, most likely my top 3, and it Huang may very well be at #1 again (it’s going to be very had to dethrone). The best way I can think of to describe the vibe is Dallas/Dynasty x Kinn/Porsche (I was going to say The Godfather but Sunbern is so Tankhun coded and Galahad reminded me a little of Vegas trying to pull Porsche… I could go on but I won’t because Lucky Seed is very much original and it’s own thing but there were some parallels that made me giggle in reminiscence).

There is so much in this book and I’m struggling to talk about how amazing it is without giving too much away because I want everyone to have the experience of reading it for the first time. It manages to be epic while also being about individual people, the history of a family and also about what the individual members of that family want and hope for and dream about. It’s about generational curses and the way they shift as they’re passed down, the way they warp each successive generation and its members differently and how much energy and it takes, and pain it causes, to truly break them. It’s about who you hold close and who you can trust. It’s about how difficult it is to really, truly walk away and how hard it is to stay. About getting what you think you want. About real active truth and actual truth and the lies we tell ourselves to make it through the day and to make it through life and what happens when we stop. About the little lies we forgot we told until the blow up in our faces. It’s about all the things that go into making family.

And it’s hopeful and funny. So funny. So fucking funny. Intriguing and honest and dark and tarnished and there are dogs which is how we know that there’s good in most of the people in this book and also how we know who’s beyond redemption. Lucky Seed is so real despite the scale being massive. I’m always in awe of writers who can plot and execute a story at such a massive scale and, somehow, keep it so personal and so human, the way that Huang has done in both of his novels so far, the first across time, and in this one across time, space, and cast of characters.

I guess “in awe” is the takeaway here. Highly recommend. Pre-order. Poke the library. Yell at your local bookstore. Do all the things. Read Lucky Seed. And if you haven’t read The Emperor and the Endless Palace yet, do that while you’re waiting. It’s a Stonewall Honor book. Those are important right now