"In the era of great reforms of Peter I, "Young Russia" is in full swing, even in dense Siberia. The nascent empire in the forest is like in the Middle Ages. Many groups of people are there: captive Swedes, Bukharan merchants, military officers and government officials, convicts, foreigners, chroniclers and architects, Chinese smugglers, fugitive splitters, shamans, Orthodox missionaries and warlike steppe Dzhungars - all of them together, quarreling among themselves or saving each other, made the fate of Russian Asia. The author has turned these scenes into into first book of an epic novel." -- cataloger's translation of the cover