Laura Anne Gilman0.0 In the anticipated sequel to Silver on the Road, Isobel is riding circuit through the Territory as the Devil's Left Hand. But when she responds to a natural disaster, she learns the limits of her power and the growing danger of something mysterious that is threatening not just her life, but the whole Territory.
Isobel is the left hand of the old man of the Territory, the Boss—better known as the Devil. Along with her mentor, Gabriel, she is traveling circuit through Flood to represent the power of the Devil and uphold the agreement he made with the people to protect them. Here in the Territory, magic exists—sometimes wild and perilous.
But there is a growing danger in the bones of the land that is killing livestock, threatening souls, and weakening the power of magic. In the next installment of the Devil’s West series, Isobel and Gabriel are in over their heads as they find what’s happening and try to stop the people behind it before it unravels the Territory.
Zethus is a sorcerer―a self-described spiritual thug for hire. He makes his living in CrossTown, a place where the manyworld hypothesis of modern physics manifests itself, where possibilities and probabilities overlap. Caught up in a web of intrigue as he investigates the death of his master, Corvinus, and pursued by agents that want to erase all knowledge of Corvinus’s work, Zethus discovers that the key to his master’s murder lies in the last project he had pursued before his death. Th e roots of this project lie deep in the past, at the origin of CrossTown’s fractured reality. Once he understands the stakes, Zethus must make the dangerous journey to the cradle of history. The price he must pay to find the answers he seeks will threaten everything he holds dear―including his own humanity.
It is 1164, and for a hundred years England has been ruled by the Normans. A young Saxon boy named Durwin, crippled by a childhood accident, had caught the eye of a Norman sage teaching at a rural school of magic. Realizing that the boy had promise, Durwin was made stable boy, and eventually allowed to attend classes.
Now twenty, Durwin is proficient enough that he is assigned to teach, but the other sages refuse to promote him and he is hassled by the Norman juniors for his disability. But those troubles turn out to be the least of his worries when he manages to corrects errors in an ancient corrupted spell, which promptly prophesies murder.
Sure enough, word soon reaches the school that one of the local count’s house sages has died, perhaps slain by black magic. Durwin is whisked away to the family’s castle, only to find that one death was only the beginning. The young sage quickly learns of a dizzying plot to assassinate King Henry. Dropped into the middle of the complex politics of England’s royal courts, can Durwin stop them in time?
The looming threat of a once-in-a-millennium magical event sends nineteenth-century China into violent chaos in this epic alternate-history fantasy.
Author of the Seventh Sword series Dave Duncan transports us to Imperial China in an alternate nineteenth century—an Asian epoch not unlike the Boxer Rebellion era—with a spellbinding tale of rebellion, political intrigue, larceny, seduction, shape-shifting, dark magic, and murder. These are troubled years in the Good Land.
Ten centuries have passed since the last time the Portal of a Thousand Worlds opened, bringing chaos, upheaval, and radical change to the then-ruling dynasty, and now the mystical gateway is rumored to be on the verge of opening once more. Only the Firstborn—he who has been reincarnated through countless generations and remembers all he has ever learned—knows what the future holds, but he has been imprisoned for refusing to comply with a repressive imperial government’s wishes.
Now, those hoping to seize the opportunity for wealth and position are hatching sinister plots. And as the cold-hearted dowager empress closely guards a fateful secret, and a rebel army led by a fanatical zealot gathers strength under the Bamboo Banner, the cataclysm approaches. . . .
The recipient of two Aurora Awards and numerous Locus and Endeavour Award nominations, Dave Duncan is an acknowledged master of sword-and-sorcery adventure on par with George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame. A sprawling epic with a colorful cast of royals, thieves, prostitutes, gods, warriors, dragons, assassins, merchants, and mages set against the backdrop of a volatile alternate Asia, Portal of a Thousand Worlds is a magnificent work of invention from one of the premier fantasists of our day.
Веками женщины рода Оршьер скрывали свой дар. Ведь они были ведьмами, могущественными и прекрасными. Больше сотни лет назад Урсула Оршьер пожертвовала собой, чтобы спасти род и сберечь дар. И магия, что жила в крови потомков Урсулы, возродилась вновь в её внучке Нанетт. Волшебство следует хранить в тайне, но соблазн использовать магию слишком велик, и в унылой жизни Урсулы, дочери Нанетт, появляется тот, перед кем так хочется распахнуть сердце… Непокорный нрав ведьмы не удержать, и её дочь Ирэн готова преступить все запреты. Но стоит ли любовь того, чтобы нарушить обеты и клятвы?
Финалист