Tobol. A set of 2 books

In the era of Peter I's great reforms, "young Russia" bubbled even in the remote Siberia. The emerging empire crushed the medieval provincialism in the taiga. Peoples and faiths intertwined. Captured Swedes, Bukhara merchants, officers and officials, convicts, natives, chroniclers and architects, Chinese smugglers, runaway dissenters, shamans, Orthodox missionaries, and warlike steppe Dzungars — all of them together, feuding amongst themselves or saving each other, shaped the destiny of Russian Asia. The peculiar threads of human fates stretched through the first book of the novel, and in the second book, they knotted together. The reforms of Tsar Peter plowed Siberia, and all those who were "called" to these free lands wonder: are they "chosen" by Siberia? Runaway dissenters raise their fiery Ship — but will the souls of those who cursed themselves on earth ascend to the heavens? Russian troops march for gold to the distant Asian city of Yarkand — but will they conquer the vast steppes and the resistance of the Dzungar hordes? A stubborn metropolitan makes his way to the sacred idol of the natives through the resistance of taiga demons. The Tobol architect, guided by secret signs of antiquity, rescues from captivity the one he hates with all his heart. The all-powerful Siberian governor finds himself in the grip of the sovereign, who must decide what is more important — his own pride or the interests of the state? ...The stories of individual people intertwine into the overall history of the country. And the history of the country moves with the force of the fierce struggle between the old and the new. Its deep energy is the tension of the eternal conflict between the Poet and the Tsar. These scorching plots have been woven by Alexey Ivanov into the peplum novel "Tobol".