[покет-серия] Тобол [в 2-х книгах]

About Volume I
 
During the era of Peter the Great’s great reforms, "young Russia" began to seethe even in the dense wilds of Siberia. The nascent empire was shattering the medieval rule of the voivodes in the taiga. Peoples and faiths were intermingling. Swedish prisoners, Bukharan merchants, officers and bureaucrats, convicts, indigenous peoples, chroniclers and architects, Chinese smugglers, runaway Old Believers, shamans, Orthodox missionaries, and the bellicose Dzungar steppe-dwellers—all of them together, feuding with one another or saving each other, were shaping the destiny of Russian Asia.

About Volume II
 
The intricate threads of human fates, stretched through the first book of the novel, have now tied into knots.

Tsar Peter’s reforms have plowed through Siberia, and all those who were "called" to these free lands are testing whether they have been "chosen" by Siberia. Runaway Old Believers are erecting their fiery Ship—but will the souls of those who cursed themselves on earth ascend to heaven? Russian regiments are marching for gold toward the distant Asian city of Yarkand—but will they overcome the vastness of the steppes and the resistance of the Dzungar hordes? A stubborn metropolitan pushes toward the sacred idol of the indigenous people, battling the resistance of taiga demons. A Tobolsk architect uses secret signs from the past to rescue from captivity the man he hates with all his heart. The all-powerful Siberian governor finds himself in the clutches of a sovereign who must decide what is more important—his own pride or the interests of the state?

...The stories of individuals intertwine into the shared history of the country. And the history of the country is moved by the force of the fierce struggle between the old and the new. Its underlying energy is the tension of the eternal dispute between the Poet and the Tsar.

Quotes

"The war will end, and enemies will cease to be enemies, but traitors remain traitors forever."

"But it is very instructive, gentlemen, to observe the structure of Russian life, where advantages are composed of shortcomings."

"Truth is not measured by profit. It simply must exist."

Features
The series design is an art project in which all of Alexei Ivanov's novels are illustrated by artists working in highly disparate styles—as different as the novels themselves. The covers for the two-volume "Tobol" were designed by Yuri Gordon.