Lucky Seed

"Lucky Seed is a family saga, a romance, a bodice ripper--a crotch ripper too--a diasporic Asian American family novel, and a thriller. A family story for a family like this could never have just one genre and Huang knows it and has fun with it. The result is thrilling to read, addictive, and full of heart and hijinks. Reader, I cackled." --Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Succession meets Crazy Rich Asians in this chaotic, darkly funny romp about the lengths a wealthy family will take to ensure the birth of a male heir from the gay black sheep of their clan.

The billionaire Sun Clan of Greater Los Angeles is your typical American family, with power-struggling aunties, emasculated uncles, scheming cousins, scandalous secrets and a fortune teller on retainer. But at the end of each combative day, the Suns are chained together with golden handcuffs, whether they like it or not.

Yet strange storms are a-brewing. Their matriarch, Roses Sun, is grappling with an existential crisis: she must produce a male heir that bears the clan's surname. She fears that if her generation is the one in which their esteemed lineage ends, they will be punished as "hungry ghosts" in the afterlife--an ancient but very real Asian superstition.

Faced with this terrifying fate, Roses summons her favorite nephew, Wayward. Believing him to possess the "lucky seed," Roses presents Wayward with a mandatory suggestion: to father a baby boy who will inherit everything. When the other members of the Sun Clan catch wind of Roses's plot, all hells break loose. Wayward's family will now clash like never before in an epic war over the future of the Suns...if there is a future at all.

Yet through the chaos, Wayward sees opportunity. What if he can leverage all the conflict into a solution for his problematic family? What if he can reunite the Sun Clan by healing them? And what if the tumultuous Suns can finally learn how to love each other for the first time?

Author: Justinian Huang
Publisher: Mira Books
Published: 11/11/2025
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.40w x 1.60d
ISBN: 9780778387862


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 07/01/2025 pg. 1
Booklist 09/01/2025
Publishers Weekly 09/15/2025

About the Author
Huang, Justinian: - JUSTINIAN HUANG's debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace, was an Indie Next Pick and a 2025 Stonewall Honor Book. It was hailed by Booklist as "a sweeping triumph," and as "page-turning and deeply thoughtful," in a starred review by Publishers Weekly. He lives in Los Angeles, where he also works as a film executive, most recently on KPop Demon Hunters. Lucky Seed is Justinian's second novel.