conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled Dragon Throne about Han, China, Shi with the genre: History.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: From 221 BC - when Shi Huangdi, First Emperor and founding father of Chinese imperial history, unified a large part of the Han Chinese homeland - until 1911, when imperial China collapsed in revolutionary chaos, China was ruled by a succession of powerful imperial dynasties. The Dragon Throne tells their rich, complex and often turbulent story, from the inception of the Qin dynasty to the fall of the Manchu in the early 20th century. China's imperial dynasties display a recurring pattern of birth, growth, prosperity and collapse due to external pressures. A number of powerful emperors left a particularly strong imprint on this troubled history, whether as conquerors, consolidators, tyrants, reformers or reactionaries. At the heart of The Dragon Throne are vivid profiles of such emperors as Shi Huangdi, who began the construction of the Great Wall; Han Wudi, the Han emperor who developed China as a centralized Confucian state; Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and Hongwu, the founder of the Ming dynasty
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the heart of The Dragon Throne are vivid profiles of such emperors as Shi Huangdi, who began the construction of the Great Wall; Han Wudi, the Han emperor who developed China as a centralized Confucian state; Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and Hongwu, the founder of the Ming dynasty. The Dragon Throne tells their rich, complex and often turbulent story, from the inception of the Qin dynasty to the fall of the Manchu in the early 20th century. China's imperial dynasties display a recurring pattern of birth, growth, prosperity and collapse due to external pressures. A number of powerful emperors left a particularly strong imprint on this troubled history, whether as conquerors, consolidators, tyrants, reformers or reactionaries.From 221 BC - when Shi Huangdi, First Emperor and founding father of Chinese imperial history, unified a large part of the Han Chinese homeland - until 1911, when imperial China collapsed in revolutionary chaos, China was ruled by a succession of powerful imperial dynasties.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first two paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dragon Throne
  IT IS DIFFICULT FOR US, studying these annals, to envision the events and personages in them, so fantastic do these accounts seem; so remote and even godlike the figures that move in their midst. We must not lose sight, however, of the fact that these beings were as human as we, in their outward forms at least: that Ailia, Damion, Morlyn, and the rest lived and breathed and knew our mortal weaknesses, doubts, and fears. For any chronicler of this strange and wondrous era the principal task must be to clothe those names in flesh.
  When she was in her seventeenth year, Ailia (as the young maiden came to be called) made a journey along with many other islanders to escape the invading armies of Khalazar, the Zimbouran tyrant king. She and her family found sanctuary in the land of Maurainia, and at the Royal Academy of Raimar she first encountered Damion Athariel, priest of the Faith of Orendyl. She secretly fell in love with him, though such a love was forbidden, but she did not guess that their lives were interwoven by destiny.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As he watched, the light from the opening seemed almost to congeal and solidify, becoming a bridge between this plane and the next: and his lifeless body was bathed in the golden glow. His consciousness was drawn down to it again, engulfed in that radiance; and then in his new, quintessential form he rose up and left the altar, flying through the bright rift as a bird flies to freedom through an open window. It closed behind him, shutting out the world.
  She showed to him many other things: lives of other beings, and far-off worlds, some that were not unlike Mera and Arainia, some as strange as dreams. Now that he had been translated into ethereal form, he was free to go where he would upon that plane, through all the incorporeal worlds and realms that the El had shaped for themselves, like islands in its seas of quintessence. And he could also project himself into the material worlds, so long as he went unseen. As for time, it was no longer his master but his servant, and he moved back and forth in it as he pleased.
  At last he came upon a world, without knowing where and when in Talmirennia it might be. It had a golden sky and a vast gold orange sun, and the lands that he saw below him as he soared through the air were dry and desolate: deserts of riverless canyons and wave upon wave of rippled dunes. Weathered pinnacles rose in ordered rows, like the towers of cities, and from steep cliff walls sprang arcs of stone that resembled flying buttresses, but were the work of nature and time. The rocks were tan-colored and many were oddly porous, so that they looked almost like petrified foam.
  As he drifted onward, following he knew not what guiding sense, he came upon a structure that was not natural in origin: an ethereal portal. Two gigantic stone cherubim lay facing each other, and between their opposed forepaws the ethereal rift—which he could see, though no mortal eye would have spied it—was still open, as though it had recently been used. From the cherub gate a road led to the ruin of a real city where he saw, rising majestic into the morning, high turrets and monumental arches and pyramids larger than any ever raised by human hands, their foundations half-swallowed by sand. All were built of the same sand-colored stone. The largest structure of all was a roofless hall with a doorway framed by six stone columns, three to each side—a doorway through which an army might have passed. Lining on either hand the road that led to the door were statues on broad plinths, some partly crumbled away, but most still looking as though they had just been sculpted. In his birth-world of Mera these would have been figures from mythology, but here they were representations of real beasts and beings: winged lions and bulls, and cherubim, and lamassus and shedus, and lion-bodied sphinxes with the heads of men or women, or falcons, or rams. He descended to move between them, up the long aisle they formed, toward the hall. In the heat shimmer the colossal pillars at its entrance seemed to dance, swaying and quivering. Perhaps the whole edifice was but a mirage, and would fade away on approach... But as he moved toward the pillars they remained in place, and ceased to quiver, and grew firm.
  But before he reached the door he heard a sound behind him, and turned to see a distant figure speeding through the trembling air. It was like one of the stone images come to life: ram-headed and lion-bodied, tawny-colored like the sand on which it ran. The creature snorted from time to time and tossed its curling horns, while its padded paws raised yellow dust clouds from the desert floor. On its back there perched a rider, his face veiled with cloth against the flying sand. He was spurring his strange steed toward the portal, but suddenly he turned and made in Damion's direction, as if he could see the Archon's invisible projection. Damion remained where he was, watching curiously as beast and man approached to within only a few paces of where he stood, and halted. The rider dismounted, and unwound the scarf from his head.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After the Disaster it is said that Maurainia fell into chaos because it was left without the spiritual center of Trynisia. However that may be, the king left no heirs and in the early days of the Dark Age the Patriarchs of the Faith were obliged to set up a theocracy until a true heir of the realm could be found. Forgetting all treaties, Marakor and Rialain took advantage of their neighbor's disarray to make forays into unguarded territories of Maurainia, and it seemed a relapse into the barbarism of the previous ages would result. But the theocrats anointed King Harron I, thus bringing the Interregnum to a close. Modeling himself after his idol Menyath the Great, he reunited Maurainia and drove the Marakites back behind their former borders. His successor, Harron II, signed new treaties with both Rialain and Marakor, and announced the creation of a second Commonwealth embracing all the Western Continent, as well as several outlying colonies on islands that Maurainia had seized. The Dark Age was ended.
  The history of the Eastern Continent is sadly marred by an almost continuous strife that goes back to epochs before recorded history. It has at various times been the home of no fewer than four empires, each of which has struggled for dominance over the centuries.
  The oldest is that of the Mohara in the south, who raised the first cities along the river deltas of the western coast. Their later history was plagued with tribal warfare, which ultimately caused the people to abandon the city-states and return to living off the land as their forefathers had done.
  The Zimbourans came out of the harsh steppes of the southern peninsula, a land into which the Moharas seldom ventured. Hardy and warlike, with pale skin and the strength of spirit that enables a people to endure bitter weather and scant food, the southern tribe drove the Dogoda people with whom they shared the plains to the extreme tip of the peninsula, and to the very edge of annihilation. They then began to push northward, seeking for fertile lands with gentler climates, but were ill-received by the Moharas due to their religion, which required human sacrifice. This practice was abhorrent to all the other Antipodeans, and because they would not alter their ways the Zimbourans were shunned, and they were excluded from the Commonwealth. In retaliation, or so it is alleged, their King Gurusha later arranged to have a sacred gemstone stolen from the High Temple of Trynisia. But even without this excuse, war between the Zimbourans and the Commonwealth lands was most likely inevitable. Their defeat at the hands of Andarion, and the Disaster with its ensuing chaos, left their kingdom in ruins for some time. Helped by their fierce resilience, however, they were first to recover from the cataclysm, and went on to conquer and despoil the Moharan lands before overrunning the Kaans' decrepit empire. The last remaining Kaanish people fled across the sea and resettled in the colonies of the Archipelagoes, which had become an island empire and flourished under the old Commonwealth.
  This accords well with the mythical account, in which the god Modrian-Valdur sent his lieutenant Azarah to destroy the world, all such higher spirits being associated with stars. Azarah also brought with it a single planet, the ill-omened Azar of Elei lore.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dragon Throne
  They were all very quiet as they approached the summit. There was something overwhelming about the mountain, now that field and forest had been left behind and its igneous bones were laid bare to their view. Sheer crags hung above, gray as louring clouds. Ailia felt increasingly timid under that granite scowl. She looked out on the ranges beyond, their slopes velveted with verdure, their peaks of layered rock etched with snow. Beyond these in turn were far-off summits completely mantled in glaciers.
  Mandrake saw her looking at them. "The great ice fields," he said softly. "This land was once completely covered in ice, and nothing could grow here. The first inhabitants of Trynisia altered its climate long ago with the aid of sorcery. They placed crystals about the land that could warm the air around them for a considerable distance. The weatherstones are there still, but their power is weakening and will one day fail. And then Trynisia will end as it began: a frozen waste, its fields and forests buried in ice, its history forgotten."
  Ailia shivered, thinking of the immense implacability of the slow-marching ice. The glaciers were merely biding their time until the day when they could devour Trynisia once more. She glanced at Mandrake's face and saw a peculiar expression on his features—"Sort of gloomy and gloating at the same time," was the nearest she could come to describing it later—and hurriedly looked away again.
  The path wound on and up, steep as a stair. And at long last they saw above them a wall, built of the mountain's gray granite and blending with the crags so that it was nearly invisible. Atop the wall was a turret, its slit windows facing the road, and beneath the turret an archway opened, dark and deep. The path led through it; on the other side must be—
  CLOUD SWIRLED ABOUT the mountainside, bellowing with thunder; in its midst old Ana stood, leaning wearily upon a granite outcrop. Winged shadows swung through the grayness overhead, dived down, and then swerved away as she raised her free hand. But the dragons flew lower with every dive, as if an invisible ceiling positioned above Ana were subsiding along with her strength. Her eyes were closed, her head bowed.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Shezzek struck him across the face. Damion winced, but Jomar was evidently accustomed to this kind of abuse: he did not even groan, but stood silent and mutinous, glaring at his former captain.
  Suddenly, and with all his might, Jomar brought his right foot down on his captor's, twisting free as the man howled with pain, and snatching his sword up from the snow. Almost in the same movement he swung around, slashing at the Zimbouran who held Damion. The man leaped back, forced to release his captive in order to grope for his own weapon. Jomar lunged, laying open the man's sword arm from wrist to elbow as Damion dived for the adamantine sword. The wounded man screamed and dropped to the snow, nursing his arm, but the other soldiers closed in, making a bristling wall of blades. Damion and Jomar stood back to back, panting, trying to face all their foes at once.
  One of the soldiers attacked Jomar, bringing his blade down upon the Mohara man's. Jomar parried the blow and responded with a vicious thrust of his own. Now two men rolled in agony at his feet. Damion waved his own sword about wildly, hoping that he looked formidable. The Zimbourans jeered and closed in, then howled in shock and dismay as the crystal blade sheared through their steel. But more men moved to flank him, forcing him to swing the sword from side to side in an effort to fend them all off. It was hopeless: even with the Paladin weapon he could not fight more than one man at a time. And the archers were raising their bows.
  They all whirled, attacked and attackers alike, to face the dark doorway. A slight figure stood there, long silvery hair flowing about it. The woman's right arm was upraised in a warding gesture, and at her feet stood a gray cat with eyes that burned red in the torchlight.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Several robed clerics then brought to her a great oaken chest, and, setting it down before her, they opened it and took out a silver scepter tipped with a six-pointed star in whose center shone a diamond big as a hen's egg. Receiving it in her right hand as she had been instructed, she was surprised and relieved to find it not nearly so heavy as it looked. And then they brought out the royal Diadem, a circlet of wrought silver: her mother had worn it before her, and as it was placed upon her head she found that it fit her perfectly. It was all encrusted with diamonds and pearls and star sapphires, and at the front the Star Stone was set, with its dew-dazzle of flashing facets. She trembled at the thought of him on whose brow that gem had first been bound.
  But then the High Sibyl motioned for to her to rise and go to the Moon Throne. All alone she went forward now with the mantle rivering behind, and took her seat upon the throne. She faced the crowd now. Gazing out at that living sea, she tried to isolate faces in its immensity. Here stood a little child—there a tall, weathered man—there a graceful Elei lady... At last she understood. She had only to be there for them, the tangible embodiment of their longings, a symbol of all they most valued. Theirs was the real power: they were the light, and she but the lens through which it shone, the mirror that returned their own brightness to them. In that instant there burst forth from the Star Stone a pure white radiance, and some there thought that they saw in the midst of it—brighter even than the surrounding incandescence—the shape of a bird of fire.
  The Tryna Lia had come at last to the throne destined to be hers; and there was rejoicing in Eldimia and beyond.
  I have rendered as English the various languages of the peoples of the world of Mera, with the exception of the ancient "dead" language of Elensi. In Ailia's time this language was no longer spoken except by the priests of the western Faith in their temple rituals, though scholars were obliged to learn it in order to study ancient texts, and traces of it were still to be found in many place names and in people's proper names passed on by tradition. These names and a few other terms I have simply rendered phonetically, rather than translating their literal meanings. I have done the same for proper and place names in other tongues, such as Zimbouran and Kaanish.
  This accords well with the mythical account, in which the god Modrian-Valdur sent his lieutenant Azarah to destroy the world; all such higher spirits being associated with stars. Azarah also brought with it a single planet, the ill-omened Azar of Elei lore.