Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor

Xiran Jay Zhao

• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781665900720
• Print ISBN:
  9781665900713

Percy Jackson meets Tristan Strong in this hilarious middle grade “edge-of-your-seat adventure” (James Ponti, New York Times bestselling author of City Spies) that follows a young boy as he journeys across China to seal the underworld shut and save the mortal realm.

Zachary Ying never had many opportunities to learn about his Chinese heritage. His single mom was busy enough making sure they got by, and his schools never taught anything except Western history and myths. So Zack is woefully unprepared when he discovers he was born to host the spirit of the First Emperor of China for a vital mission: sealing the leaking portal to the Chinese underworld before the upcoming Ghost Month blows it wide open.

The mission takes an immediate wrong turn when the First Emperor botches his attempt to possess Zack’s body and binds to Zack’s AR gaming headset instead, leading to a battle where Zack’s mom’s soul gets taken by demons. Now, with one of history’s most infamous tyrants yapping in his headset, Zack must journey across China to heist magical artifacts and defeat figures from history and myth, all while learning to wield the emperor’s incredible water dragon powers.

And if Zack can’t finish the mission in time, the spirits of the underworld will flood into the mortal realm, and he could lose his mom forever.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter 1: How to Get Superpowers by Reading Wikipedia
• Chapter 2: How Not to Win a Battle Using Soup
• Chapter 3: How Video Game Nerds Can Be Trounced With Ancient Chinese Military Tactics
• Chapter 4: How the Creation of China Was Exactly Like American Idol
• Chapter 5: How to Get Rich and Famous by Renting Your Body to a Dead Emperor
• Chapter 6: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
• Chapter 7: How the Qin State Unified China By Turning Itself into an MMO
• Chapter 8: How Chinese Sherlock Homes and Chinese Leeroy Jenkins Can Help a Museum Heist
• Chapter 9: How to Cope with Being a Supervillain’s Henchboy
• Chapter 10: How a Leaf Can Return to Its Tree
• Chapter 11: How Your Ancestor Can Be a Bird
• Chapter 12: How Legendary Poets Duke It Out
• Chapter 13: How to Pull Off a Good Boy, Bad Emperor Routine By Yourself
• Chapter 14: How to Scam the Ancient Chinese Justice League
• Chapter 15: How to Turn the Tides. Literally.
• Chapter 16: How It Feels to Have an Easy Fight for Once
• Chapter 17: How to Slay Immortals By Becoming Underwater Darth Vader
• Chapter 18: How the Great Wall Can Be Appropriated as a Racetrack
• Chapter 19: How to Get What You Want at All Costs
• Chapter 20: How to Handle Ultimate Power
• Chapter 21: How to Be a Benevolent Gang Leader
• Chapter 22: How to Wake Qin Dynasty Romeo Back Up
• Chapter 23: How to Force Your Way Through Someone Else’s Daddy Issues
• Chapter 24: How a New Emperor Is Born
• Chapter 25: How Everybody Sucks and Nothing’s Over
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright