The Vast Spread of the Seas (Sea God in the East, Vast Sea in the West, 東の海神 西の滄海) is the third book in The Twelve Kingdoms

The Twelve Kingdoms

is a series of light novels by Fuyumi Ono. The first entry in the series was published in Japan in 1991; the last volume was released in 2001. The series was published by Kodansha and contains illustrations by Akihiro Yamada.The Chinese mythology-influenced books were adapted into an animated...

fantasy series written by Fuyumi Ono

Fuyumi Ono

is a Japanese novelist who is best known for writing series, on which a popular anime is based. Her name after marriage is , but she writes under her maiden name.- Biography :...

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The English-language edition was published by Tokyopop

Tokyopop

Tokyopop, styled TOKYOPOP, and formerly known as Mixx, is a distributor, licensor, and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa, and Western manga-style works. The existing German publishing division produces German translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well...

 on March 2009 as Hardcover

Hardcover

A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...

under its PopFiction imprint.

The book focuses on Enki and Shoryu, the kirin and king of En respectively, in the early years of Shoryu's reign when Shoryu is forced to quell a rebellion in En. The novel reveals their origins as taika, people originating in the Twelve Kingdoms but swept away by a shoku storm and born in Hourai, and how they met.

Plot introduction

When only an eggfruit, the kirin of the En Kingdom, Rokuta, was transported to Japan for his own protection. But he was abandoned soon after birth by his surrogate parents, left to fend for himself in the mountains. It just so happened that at the same time, a young boy in the En Kingdom named Koya was also abandoned by his own parents, after which he was raised by demon beasts. Their similar circumstances aren't the only thing to bind these two boys, though. Twenty years after their abandonment, their destinies intersect, with potentially disastrous consequences for the En Kingdom.