The Broken Moon Chronicles: Crescent Moon

Crescent Moon is a historical fiction set in Tang China, following Wu Canyue, daughter of the Wu clan—family of China’s only female emperor. As the empire teeters, she quietly rises in Chang’an, gathering power and emerging in history’s shadows. Narrated by her father, a former clan member who survived the purge by hiding as a mute cripple, the story reveals his sacrifices to protect her. Unaware he lives, Canyue mistakes him for an old retainer and takes him in.

Formidable, pragmatic, and uninterested in domestic life, she unites martial sects, merchants, and warriors into the Broken Moon Sect (hereafter Moon Sect), publicly running escort services but secretly expanding amid a weakening imperial center. When rebellion erupts, she abandons neutrality; survival guides her above loyalty or orthodoxy. Neither mere avenger nor savior, she navigates a collapsing age with self-aware precision. Through father and daughter’s dual perspectives, the novel explores bloodline, loyalty, gender, and power, asking if figures like Canyue—“incomplete moons”—can exist beyond the shadows.

Crescent Moon is a chronicle of female growth, political awakening, and the quiet collapse of a golden age.