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Night Whispers

fantasy

As Jayfeather, Lionblaze, and Dovepaw continue to seek answers to the mysterious prophecy that binds them, they learn that another cat may play an essential role in defeating the Dark Forest.

Princess Academy

fantasy

Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl from Mount Eskel, an isolated territory of Danland, who has never been allowed to work with the rest of the villagers in the quarry that keeps the community alive. Because of this, she feels like an outcast in the community and cut off from the culture focused around a shared working life in the quarry. As the quarry can barely cut enough linder to feed the villagers, Miri keeps on trying to help. In spite of her feelings of isolation, Miri is very close to her father and her sister, Marda, and she shares a close friendship with a boy named Peder. Unexpectedly, a messenger from the king arrives along with the usual traders from the lowlands. The messenger announces that the nation's priests have informed the nation that, despite the lack of education provided for the villagers and the prejudice that exists between the mountain villagers and the lowlanders, the crown prince's future bride will come from Mount Eskel. A "princess academy" is established near the village to train the potential princesses, with compulsory attendance for every girl aged between twelve and seventeen. At the end of the year, the prince will visit the academy and choose the girl to be the next princess. Miri and the other girls attend the academy, and although they struggle to appease the strict teacher, Tutor Olana, Miri excels at learning and commerce. All the girls are eager to please the prince and win a comfortable life for themselves and their families, and Miri's new knowledge of commerce helps the village prosper in trading with the lowlanders. After a disagreement, the girls use their knowledge of diplomacy to negotiate a more bearable living arrangement with Tutor Olana, including weekly visits home. Miri also begins to explore the mechanics of quarry-speech, a form of unspoken communication used only in the quarry, and makes friends with some of the other girls, including Britta, a lowlander who had recently moved to Mount Eskel. Miri's excellence in her studies and her willingness to help her peers despite bitter competition eventually earn her the title of academy princess and the privilege of having the first dance with the prince. At the academy ball, the prince dances with every girl except Britta, who is ill, and generally acts very distant. Later in the evening, he takes a walk with Miri and shows a more human side. However, he leaves without choosing a bride. Once the prince has left, promising to return in the spring to announce his choice, bandits attack the academy hoping to hold the new princess hostage. Miri must use her new knowledge of quarry speech to call for help from the village. At first no one seems to hear her, but eventually she is able to contact Peder. The villagers come to the academy through the blizzard, and the girls escape from the bandits and spend the winter at home with their families. In the spring, the prince returns and chooses to marry Britta - whom he has known since childhood - and names Mount Eskel an official province. The book ends with Peder and Miri admitting their feelings toward each other.

Foxmask

fantasy

When Thorvald turns 18, his mother Margaret decides to tell her son the truth about his father's identity. Upon learning that Somerled was his father, Thorvald decided to find the man. With his friend Sam's help, Thorvald begins his journey. Unbeknown to the two boys, Creidhe stows aboard. When the boat becomes damaged, they land on the lost isle that Somerled had landed on 18 years earlier, the Isle of Storms. To the south of the Isle of Storms resided the Unspoken, who, while capable of powerful magic, are in turmoil without their leader or seer - The one whom they call Foxmask. The Ruler of the Isle of Storms had had a daughter and a son. The daughter had been given to Foxmask’s people 7 years previously so she could give birth to a child who would become Foxmask. To save this heir from the maiming the Unspoken deemed necessary, the Ruler's son stole the child and hid it on the Isle of Clouds, an island to the west of the Isle of Storms. The Unspoken levied a curse on the Ruler’s people whereby no new children would be allowed to survive past the second morning of their life. This curse was to stay in effect until Foxmask was returned to his people or a new Seer was born to take his place.

High Deryni

fantasy

The novel takes place in June and July 1121, less than a year after the coronation of fourteen-year-old King Kelson Haldane. At the beginning of the book, Kelson is leading an army into the Duchy of Corwyn to put down the rebellion of an anti-Deryni zealot named Warin de Grey. Warin is allied with Archbishop Edmund Loris, the leader of the Holy Church. Together, they have taken the ducal capital of Coroth and are openly revolting against the Crown due to Kelson's support of his Deryni advisors, Duke Alaric Morgan and Monsignor Duncan McLain. Morgan and Duncan decide to go to Dhassa and seek to reconcile with the six bishops who have refused to follow Loris' anti-Deryni crusade. Meanwhile, in the border city of Cardosa, King Wencit Furstán, the powerful Deryni ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, seeks to convince Earl Bran Coris of Marley to betray Kelson and assist in an invasion of Gwynedd. Morgan and Duncan arrive at Dhassa and surrender to the bishops, who are led by Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan. After hearing their explanations for their previous actions, the two bishops agree to forgive them. On the border, Earl Sean Lord Derry, Morgan's aide, is captured by Bran Coris. Coris has decided to betray Kelson and immediately turns Derry over Wencit, who begins to torture Derry both physically and mentally. Morgan senses Derry's pain when he attempts to contact him, but his use of his powers is detected by Bishop Arilan, who reveals that he is also Deryni. Kelson's army then marches to Coroth, where the young king confronts the rebellious archbishop. Unwilling to assault Coroth directly, Morgan sneaks into the castle with Kelson, Duncan, and Bishop Cardiel. Once inside, they confront Warin and force him to re-evaluate his beliefs by comparing his mysterious healing ability to Morgan's. Having acquired Warin's aid, Kelson confronts Loris the following morning and takes the archbishop into custody. With the internal ecclesiastical schism now resolved, Kelson's army prepares to face the invading Torenthi army. Kelson learns of Bran Coris' treason, but is nonetheless determined to win the war. The Gwyneddan army arrives at the border shortly thereafter and is greeted by grisly evidence of Bran Coris' betrayal. During a parley session with the Torenthi invaders, Morgan manages to rescue Derry, but the army is unable to prevent the murder of fifty Gwyneddan soldiers, including Duncan's father. Wencit challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, a form of ritualized magical combat in which each king will be accompanied by three companions. Before Kelson can agree, Arilan suddenly requests a brief period to consider the challenge. A short time later, Arilan reveals that he is not only Deryni, but also a member of the Camberian Council, a secretive group of highly-trained Deryni who oversee and regulate such duels. In issuing his challenge, Wencit claims that he has secured the cooperation of the Council, but Arilan has heard nothing of such a request. He establishes a Transfer Portal in Kelson's tent and travels to the Council's chambers, demanding an explanation from his comrades. They soon realize that Wencit has attempted to trick Kelson by bringing four imposters to the duel. Though initially reluctant to arbitrate the duel, the Council finally agrees after Arilan brings Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan to confront them. The following morning, Kelson rides out to face Wencit, accompanied by Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan. Although furious when the real Council arrives, Wencit eventually concedes to their presence. The Duel Arcane begins, but it is suddenly interrupted before the first spell can be summoned. One of Wencit's allies reveals himself to be another member of the Camberian Council, one who has been working to bring down Wencit for years for his own personal reasons. He provided poisoned wine for Wencit and his other allies, and all four are soon dying from its effects. Unwilling to let his enemies suffer needlessly, Kelson uses his powers to kill each of them. With Wencit's death, the Duel Arcane is ended and Kelson emerges victorious.

The City of Ravens

fantasy

The story follows a petty thief called Jack Ravenwild, who is hired by the beautiful Elana to find a very special book. In the same tenday (the Realms equivalent of a week), he resorts to spying on another perfect woman, a mage named Zandria, to try to get information. But, the beautiful Illyth invites him to the game of masks, and at the same time he fears for his friend Anders, wanted by the evil Brothers Kuldath for stealing their ruby. Soon Jack finds both good and evil people following him through the streets of Ravens Bluff.

Tam Lin

fantasy

The protagonist of Tam Lin is Janet Carter. Written in the indirect third person, from Carter's point of view, the novel is set during her years as a student in the early 1970s at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota. The characters include her fellow students, professors at the college, her family, and a childhood friend. The plot combines the story of a young woman's life at college with a retelling of the traditional Scottish fairy ballad "Tam Lin".

Warlord of the Air

fantasy

The novel is transcribed by 'Michael Moorcock' (the author's fictional grandfather) in 1903. Holidaying at the remote Rowe Island, he befriends Oswald Bastable, an ex-soldier stowaway who seems confused and disoriented beyond what could be explained by his opium addiction, and who is tormented by great guilt from an action he performed in his past. Bastable agrees to tell Moorcock the story, and begins his narrative with his experiences in North East India in 1902, sent as part of a British expedition to deal with Sharan Kang, an Indian high priest at the temple of Teku Benga, a mysterious and seemingly supernaturally powerful region. After a confrontation with Kang and his men, Bastable finds himself lost and alone in the caves around the 'Temple of the Future Buddha', where he is assaulted by a mysterious force and knocked into unconsciousness. When he awakes, and escapes the caves, the Temple is in ruins, as if a great amount of time has passed. He is soon found and picked up by a massive airship, where he learns that it is in fact the year 1973, but not the one that the reader would recognise. In this alternate future, the First World War never happened, and the colonial powers continue to assert dominance over their empires—for example, India remains a British territory, though Winston Churchill had been viceroy in this alternate future as well as in Bastable's own. At first, Bastable marvels at the wonders that await him in his 'future' — London is a clean and peaceful city, and the world seems to be a utopia, held in balance by the great empires. Gaining employment amongst the great airship armadas, however, he soon comes into contact with a troop of anarchists — among them a mysterious woman named Una Persson, and an ancient Russian revolutionary named Ulianov. He initially maintains a patriotic resistance to their activities, but gradually discovers the truth: life is peaceful for the dominant empires but the seeming utopia of the empires' home countries is based on decades of unimpeded and unopposed colonial oppression, brutality and domination of their territories. As the First World War never happened to bankrupt the colonial empires and begin the gradual liberalisation and freedom of the colonies, imperialism remains unchecked and the world is greatly unfair and unjust. Great Britain, France, the Tsarist Russian Empire, the German Empire, Japan, the Italian Empire and the United States ruthlessly dominate this world and suppress anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist dissent. Bastable, a fair and honorable man, is outraged by the cruelty, injustice and horror revealed to him, and begins to fight for the oppressed peoples of the world (opposing, amongst others, his former friend in the airship service, Major Enoch Powell). Tragically, his actions result in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the hands of the anarchists. The atomic blast knocks him loose from the alternate 1973, sending him to a new 1903. Wracked with guilt over his part in the destruction of countless millions of innocent lives, and dreading the 'future' of science and imperialism gone mad, Bastable makes his way to the caves of Teku Benga and returns to 1903, but alas, not his own original time. His experiences have altered him too much to settle into life in this new alternate universe; both his experiences and this sense of dislocation have driven him to opium. The novel ends with Bastable disappearing mysteriously, much to the 1903 Moorcock's amazement; and a postscript from the modern author Moorcock, establishing his grandfather's death on the Western Front in 1916.

The Time Machine

fantasy

The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator. In the new narrative, the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival. Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller is shocked to find his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside, which resembles a Sphinx. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, ape-like troglodytes who live in darkness underground and surface only at night. Within their dwellings he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers. The Time Traveller theorizes that intelligence is the result of and response to danger; with no real challenges facing either species, they have both lost the spirit, intelligence, and physical fitness of Man at its peak. Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning as none of the other Eloi take any notice of her plight, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. He plans to take Weena back to his own time. Because the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they stop in the forest, and they are then overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena faints. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is presumably lost in the fire, as are the Morlocks. The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches chasing butterflies in a world covered in simple lichenous vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow larger, redder, and dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out. Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, arriving just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers Weena had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller's house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveller promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him.

The Candle in the Wind

fantasy

The story begins with Mordred and Agravaine, both discontent. Mordred hates his father, King Arthur, and Agravaine hates Sir Lancelot. Their views are not shared by Gawaine, Gareth, or Gaheris. The relationship of Lancelot and Guinevere has gone on for some time and everyone in the court knows of it. No one, however, publicly speaks of it as law would require Lancelot to be killed and Guinevere to be burned at the stake. In order to wreak their revenge, Mordred and Agravaine decide to go to the king and officially charge the Queen with adultery. Troubled by this, King Arthur agrees to leave on a hunting trip to give the knights a chance to catch the Queen with Lancelot, although he does say that if they are caught, he hopes that Lancelot will be able to kill all witnesses and adds that if the two fail in backing their claims, he will see to it that they are pursued by the law themselves. At the same time, he confesses to Guinevere and Lancelot a terrible secret: When Mordred was born, Arthur had been told by many people that the child would be evil, as a result of the incest. Pressured, the king commanded all babies born in the approximate month Mordred would be born to be placed on a boat which was then sunk. Mordred managed to survive this, however, and Arthur lived with the guilt of causing the death of the other babies. When the king leaves for his hunting party, Lancelot prepares to sneak over to Guinevere's room. Before he can leave, Gareth visits him and warns him of Mordred and Agravaine's plot. Lancelot receives him warmly, but does not take the threat seriously as he does not believe that Arthur would entertain such an idea. He leaves for the Queen's room without weapons or armor, assuring Gareth that they would all laugh together about this when the king returned. In Guinevere's room, Lancelot laughingly tells her of Gareth's warning. Unlike him, however, the queen takes the threat seriously and tries to convince the knight to leave before they are caught. Too late, however - they find a group of knights attempting to break into Guinevere's room. Lancelot manages to kill one of them (later revealed to be Agravaine) and takes his weapon and armor to defeat the rest. Mordred, however, escapes to tell Arthur of the Queen's faithlessness. Lancelot is forced to flee Camelot, however promises to return to rescue Guinevere. Though unwilling to kill his wife, Arthur is obliged to obey his own laws and prepares for her execution. Mordred faces scorn and anger from his brothers, who are furious with him for turning in the queen and accuse him of being a coward for running away from his fight with Lancelot. Arthur later explains to them that Mordred survived because Lancelot was unwilling to kill Arthur's son. When Mordred learns that Lancelot will return to prevent Guinevere's execution, he demands that Arthur put more guards in the town. While Gawaine refuses to take part in the events, Gareth and Gaheris are stationed as additional guards. Just as Guinevere is about to be burned, Lancelot rides in and rescues her. Much to Gawaine's horror however, it is discovered that in his haste to reach the queen, Lancelot killed Gareth and Gaheris before he could recognize them. Guinevere and Lancelot flee to France, and request forgiveness from the Pope. It is granted and Guinevere is permitted to return to Camelot. Lancelot remains in France, where Arthur is forced to fight him for honor. During the siege, Gawaine receives a blow to the head that gravely injures him. In Camelot, Mordred is left to rule in Arthur's stead. He corners Guinevere and tells her that he intends to overthrow Arthur's rule and take her as his wife (as revenge for Arthur sleeping with Mordred's mother). Guinevere manages to send a message to Arthur and upon hearing the news, Gawaine dies. Arthur then returns to England to stop Mordred. On the eve of battle, in a state of semi-consciousness, he remembers Merlin's lessons. To make sure that his legacy lives on even if he dies in the battle, he explains his ideas to a young serving boy, Tom of Warwick (implied to be Thomas Malory of Warwickshire). He tells the boy how his idea of peace was like a candle in the wind, which he had kept alight with an effort. The book ends with Arthur sending Tom away to safety, and then he is ready to face the coming battle "with a peaceful heart." Arthur acknowledges that he shall perhaps come again to try to create another perfect Round Table. He remembers before death, the times he spent with Merlyn doing missions. At the thought, Merlyn 'might' have appeared, but he dismissed it for though he is locked up, though in The Book of Merlyn this moment is when Merlyn appears to him and takes Arthur away for a debate on war, humanity etc... We are meant to know already how the battle goes, (see Battle of Camlann). We end on a note of hope as Arthur accepts his fate with a clear mind, as if he is refreshed. Although the details of the battle are not recounted, according to legend all of the knights are killed, and Arthur kills Mordred, and Mordred mortally wounds Arthur. White puts forth both that Arthur died, or the other story where he is set adrift to Avalon where his wounds may be healed that he might rule again.

Wolf Brother

fantasy

In pre-agricultural Europe,the hunter-gatherers of the Forest live in clans, each represented by a particular animal or life form. Torak and his father, of Wolf Clan, live together in the forest. During Torak's twelfth year, his father ("Fa") is killed by a bear which has been possessed by a demon. Before Torak's father dies, he tells Torak to swear an oath to head north and find the Mountain of the World Spirit, and ask the World Spirit to help destroy the bear before it kills all life in the forest. His guide will find him and help him on his quest. Torak reluctantly leaves his father as the bear comes back to kill him. Torak heads north and soon encounters an orphaned wolf cub. Torak initially tries to kill the cub in order to eat it, but he doesn't have the heart. He discovers that he can communicate with the cub. The Cub smells Torak is of the Wolf Clan, who was fed by a wolf as a baby, and accepts Torak as his pack-brother. He realizes the cub is the guide, and Torak names the cub "Wolf". Over time they become good friends. A few days later Torak and Wolf are captured by the Raven Clan, who accuse Torak of stealing one of their roe deer. They are taken to the Raven camp so Torak's fate can be decided by Fin-Kedinn, the Raven Clan leader. Torak's captors are a teenage boy named Hord, a girl named Renn, and a man named Oslak. In the Raven camp, Torak is taken to Fin-Kedinn. Unlike the other Ravens, Fin-Kedinn treats him with kindness and respect, until Fin-Kedinn realizes who Torak's father was. To regain his freedom, Torak fights Hord, who is much bigger and stronger, to prove his innocence. He wins by temporarily blinding Hord with steam from some broth which is cooking nearby. This, together with the dog whistle which Torak has made to summon Wolf, makes Fin-Kedinn and Saeunn, the Raven mage (shaman), see Torak as the possible fulfillment of a prophecy about a "Listener". The prophecy states that the Listener, who "talks with silence and fights with air", will offer his heart's blood to the World Spirit and thereby kill the demon-bear. One interpretation of this prophecy is that Torak must be sacrificed, and his blood taken to the Mountain of the World Spirit. Fin-Keddin reveals to Torak that his Fa was the Wolf Clan's mage, and the Demon Bear was created for the sole purpose of killing his Fa. They then lock Torak away while they debate his fate. Torak escapes, helped by Renn, who believes that Torak must go to the Mountain of the World Spirit himself. Renn tells Torak the rest of the prophecy, which says he must find three parts of the "Nanuak", the brightest soul, to please the World Spirit and ensure its aid. On their journey together, guided by Wolf, Torak finds the first part of the Nanuak when he falls into a river, the second part in a cave, and the third part while crossing the treacherous glacial flow close to the High Mountains. Nearly at their destination, Renn and Torak are recaptured by the Ravens and taken to the Raven Clan's new temporary camp. Fin-Kedinn releases Torak, believing him to be the one who should go to the Mountain. Fin-Kedinn also reveals that Torak's Fa was killed because he dedicated himself to thwarting a group of rogue mages, the Soul Eaters, who have turned to evil in their determination to rule the Forest. Torak and Wolf climb the mountain, followed by the bear. Torak is unexpectedly attacked by Hord, who believes himself to be the one who must take the Nanuak to the mountain. Torak realizes that the prophecy's "heart's blood" means Wolf, and as Wolf carries off the Nanuak, Hord and the bear are engulfed by an ensuing avalanche, and fall down the mountain. Torak escapes from under his hiding place and looks for Wolf, but he only hears his howl in the distance, along with the howls of other wolves. Torak howls to Wolf, promising that he will one day return for him, before turning to head back into the forest.

Drome

fantasy

Two explorers travel miles beneath Mount Rainier and discover a cavernous realm, filled with glowing mist, called Drome, which is home to a lost civilization and fantastic animals, including bat-apes, snake-cats, and tree-octopi.

Fairest

fantasy

Aza, the adopted daughter of innkeepers in Ayortha, has always hated her appearance. Her prodigious size and her odd coloring – milk-white skin, blood-red lips, and hair that seems to be sooty black – often make her the target of stares and rude comments. However, Aza's voice garners as much attention as her looks, for Ayortha is a land of song, and Aza is an amazing singer. Besides being skilled at singing, Aza can also flawlessly mimic people and throw her voice without moving her mouth, a form of ventriloquism she calls "illusing". Still, Aza is flattered when a frequent visitor to the inn, a gnome named zhamM, tells Aza that her hair is the most beautiful hair he's ever seen. While her hair looks black to humans, it is the lovely color htun, a dark purplish color, to gnomes. When Aza's sister, Areida, goes to finishing school, the Duchess of Olixo, an irritable guest at the Featherbed Inn, requests that Aza accompany her to the royal wedding because her companion has fallen ill. The new queen, Ivi, discovers Aza's gift and manipulates her. As Ivi cannot sing well, she offers to reward Aza with land and riches for her family as well as elevation to the rank of lady-in-waiting in exchange for Aza illusing a voice for her when she needs to sing; when Aza tries to refuse, Ivi threatens to imprison her and close her family's inn. Soon after Aza reluctantly accepts Ivi's offer, the castle is thrown into turmoil when King Oscaro is terribly wounded during a sporting event with centaurs. Aza is caught in the midst of Ivi's power-hungry plotting, the affection of the king's nephew Crown Prince Ijori, the suspicions of the choirmaster Sir Uellu, and her own increasing desperation to become beautiful, a desire which grows so strong that she ultimately drinks a beauty potion created by Skulni, the mysterious, evil creature living in Ivi's magic mirror. With the country on the verge of revolt, the inevitable discovery of Aza and Ivi's singing deception leaves Aza fleeing for her life when a jealous Ivi leads to Aza being branded as a dangerous ogre. Exiled, Aza is welcomed by the gnomes; zhamM provides her with food, shelter, and a sense of heritage. He assures her that while she is certainly not part ogre, he believes one of her ancestors was a gnome, explaining her strange appearance and htun hair. After she has spent some time with the gnomes, a sinister scheme forces Aza to fight for her life, discover her true source of strength, and ultimately, learns to accept herself. She marries the prince, King Oscaro recovers, Ivi turns from her evil ways, and Aza becomes queen of Ayortha, alongside her husband, King Ijori. She bears three children, all of whom resemble their father but have htun hair just like their mother.

The Way of Shadows

fantasy

Azoth is an orphan who lives in the Warrens of Cenaria City. He and his two friends, Jarl and Doll Girl, are members of the Black Dragon guild. They make their living stealing money to buy food and pay their guild dues to Rat, the Guild Fist, an enforcer who beats anyone who doesn't pay. One night while Azoth is underneath a local tavern scrounging for coins he overhears a confrontation between Durzo Blint, the best wetboy in the city, and several unknown assailants. After Durzo slaughters the assassins, he catches the escaping Azoth and tells him to not lose a word about that to anyone. One day Rat asks Azoth to be one of his "pretty boys". Azoth's rejection humiliates and angers Rat. Later that day Jarl shows Azoth a secret stash of coins that he has been saving for four years, which he gives Azoth so that he can apprentice to Durzo Blint. Blint is ambushed by the Black Dragon after fulfilling one of his contracts, but makes his way out by incapacitating Ja'laliel, the guild head, and scaring everyone else away. After that he is followed by Azoth as he leaves to make his report at the Sa'kagé headquarters. Although Azoth stays outside, Blint discovers his presence and declines Azoth's bid of being allowed to become Blint's apprentice. Azoth fails in following him when the wetboy leaves. The next day Azoth wakes up to find out that Rat has raped Jarl and made him "one of his girls". Rat wants to punish Azoth for pursuing Durzo but Ja'laliel forbids it. However, Ja'laliel is terminally ill, and Azoth is afraid that Rat will soon be the guild head. Azoth plans his revenge on Rat for Jarl's rape, trying to turn the guild against him, but Rat lets him play the hero. Elsewhere in Cenaria, eleven-year-old Logan Gyre watches his father, Duke Regnus Gyre, as he prepares to travel to a garrison, called Screaming Winds. Logan asks to go with his father, but Duke Gyre refuses and leaves his son as the Lord of House Gyre. Three months pass, during which time Azoth starts to get followers who also hate Rat. One of his followers steals a metal shiv and gives it to Azoth. One night in an alley Azoth encounters Durzo. Azoth insists on apprenticing with him, even going so far as to threaten Durzo's life. Durzo finally makes Azoth an offer; if he kills Rat in one week without any help and brings proof, Durzo will apprentice him. A travelling mage, Solon Tofusin, arrives at the Gyre estate. He is on a mission from the prophet Dorian to help Lord Gyre. When he finds out Duke Gyre has gone to Screaming Winds, he plans to head there immediately, but his plans are disrupted when he finds out that Logan has also been named Lord Gyre. Logan forces him to spar, and Solon humiliates him. He tells him that Logan's soldiers have been losing to him on purpose, which infuriates Logan. He tells his men to treat him as no more than an equal; he is soon going to join his father at Screaming Winds, and if they truly love him, they should be preparing him for the battles there. He apologizes to Solon, who is impressed with Logan and decides to stay with him, at least for now. Rat, meanwhile, has a secret meeting, where it is revealed that he is actually one of the sons of the Godking, who rules Khalidor, a vicious empire to the north, and that Rat was brought to the city in order to prepare it for invasion. A Vurdmeister, a powerful mage assigned to protect him called Neph Dada, shares with him a plan on how to truly destroy Azoth. Four days pass after Durzo gives Azoth his challenge and Rat is still not dead. Worried that Rat will begin to purge his followers, Azoth stays awake all night, but leaves briefly to urinate. While away, Rat and his men kill one of Azoth's followers and kidnap Doll Girl. In the morning, Azoth runs into Durzo, who grabs him and tells him that he will show Azoth the price of his hesitation. Solon is having dinner with the Gyres. They make small talk and not much else, until Solon offends Logan's mother. She tries to send Solon away, despite Logan's efforts, but Logan reminds her he is now Lord Gyre, and sends her away. Solon is even more impressed with Logan, and becomes less certain that Duke Gyre is the one he must serve. In his indecision, he heads out to a tavern. Rat has beaten Doll Girl almost to death, and given her terrible scars on her face. Durzo plans to leave Azoth, but he insists that he will kill Rat within the week, and pleads with Durzo to save Doll Girl. Despite his protests that life is empty and meaningless, Durzo finally concedes. He finds Solon drinking, poisons him, and takes him to Doll Girl. He tells Solon that he can have the antidote if he heals Doll Girl, which he does. Upstairs in a brothel, Durzo is meeting with Momma K. He tells her that Azoth has him worried; he doesn't think that Azoth has it in him to be a killer. At that very moment, however, Azoth is confronting Rat. Rat takes his shiv and tries to rape Azoth, who kills him and cuts off his ear to take to Durzo. He walks in right after Momma K tells Durzo why he needs Azoth. Durzo initially doesn't accept the ear as proof, so Azoth takes him to the river and shows him the body. Durzo offers him one more chance to get out, to apprentice in a clean trade, but Azoth refuses and goes with Durzo. Azoth begins his training with Durzo, which carries on for several years. Eventually, Azoth is sent to Count Rimbold Drake, an old friend of Durzo, who will give him a new name and life. On his way out with his new identity, a poor noble named Kylar Stern, Durzo see Solon Tofusin standing with the mountainous Logan Gyre. Durzo has Kylar run into Logan then start a fight so Durzo can get away. After being beaten senseless by Logan in front of Count Drake's daughter Serah, his crush, Logan insists upon forgiving Kylar. Durzo sends Kylar into Logan's house and they soon become great friends. A few years later, Durzo enters Kylar into a swordsman tournament sponsored by the local Blademasters. The winner will become the king's new bodyguard. Durzo tells Kylar that the Sa'kagé wants to stretch its arm and remind everyone who is in charge. The catch is no Talented, or magical, contestants. Kylar is confronted by a sister of the Chantry who tells him that his conduit for magic is broken while his glore vyrden, his magical store, is huge. There is nothing to be done. Upon facing the opponents, almost all of them should have given him a much harder challenge, he learns that the Sa'kagé has stacked the racks so Kylar could win. Kylar then faces Logan who Kylar beats easily, while wearing a mask so Logan cannot discover his identity. After the tournament Durzo seeks a way for Kylar to be able to use his talent. A kakari would be the perfect thing. With the rumored silver kakari supposedly close, Kylar is supposed to get into the party to get it. Dorian breaks into his herbalist shop and tells Kylar to "ask Momma K" and that "a square vase will give you hope." Momma K had told him that she had someone who may be able to get him in. When he goes to visit this person, it turns out to be Elene, A.K.A. Doll Girl. She denies him an invitation due to her obligation to her family. Kylar leaves and finds his own way into the party. Once there, he starts a fight with Logan as a distraction and then walks off to sneak up the stairs into the chambers to find the kakari. He gets into the room where it is supposed to be. Even after opening the secret area with the square vase, he finds nothing. The kakari isn't there. Soon after, a ruthless wetboy named Hu kills the entire Gyre family except for Logan and his father. Kylar then realizes that Elene must have the kakari. He went down to her room to find her wielding a weapon, but she inadvertently shows him where the silver kakari is hidden with her eyes. Kylar knocks Elene out, and Durzo arrives. The silver kakari ends up being a fake, however Kylar still ends up with a kakari, the black kakari, which he unknowingly steals from Durzo. The heir to the throne is killed that night. Durzo demands they leave. After they leave the death is blamed on a wetboy. While Kylar is in his room at Count Drakes house, Vi, dressed as a maid, attempts to first seduce him, and then kill him. She hesitates, and Count Drake bursts in. After that Royal guards show up and charge Logan with murder of the heir and take him to prison. The King arranges a marriage between Jenine, his daughter, and Logan to secure the line of succession and an heir in case of his own death. Kylar heads to the castle to kill the king. During the ceremony Durzo, who is working for Roth in order to preserve his daughter, poisons everyone in the King's court. During this time Roth and Neph attack the castle. Khalidorans arrive by sea with vurdmeisters but Kylar slows down the process by burning quite a few. Amidst attack, one of the king's advisors beheads him so that the remaining knights will focus on saving the new king, Logan, who is in his bed chambers preparing to consummate his marriage to Jenine. These knights are trapped and Roth shoots each one down through a spy hole while six Khalidoran archers hide behind the door to the chamber. After they all die Roth and Neph come into the room as the couple kills the Khalidorans. Roth apparently kills Jenine, but Neph secretly preserves her for the godking, who is on his way. Neph then orders Logan be castrated and fed to the howlers. Kylar, as the Night Angel, helps release some prisoners and tells them to rebel. After hearing of Logan's location he heads to the bedchamber. He finds the trapped dead people, and the six dead archers. In the bed chamber, there is nothing but blood and a torn up night gown. He is apparently too late. Kylar then battles with Durzo and finally kills him. As Logan is marched toward the hole, one of the guards kills the other and castrates him, leaving the organs as if they were Logan's and tossing the body into the hole. The guard reveals that he was hired by Jarl and tells Logan he can leave. By the time Logan is free from his magical bonds and able to move, it is too late. Several magicians are about to arrive. As a last resort, Logan takes a knife and jumps into the hole. Kylar encounters Roth, but he is surrounded by Vurdmeisters, who end up capturing Kylar. Roth reveals himself as Rat, who had survived the earlier attempt on his life. Solon arrives outside with Curoch and uses the powerful magical sword to slay a large group of vurdmeisters. Kylar breaks free of his captors' hold and kills everyone, including Roth, but is killed himself. Kylar meets the Wolf in death. He is given the choice of life or full death. He chooses Elene and life, then revives to find himself with Uly and Elene. They had dragged him out of the castle and back to Momma K and Jarl.

The Fairy Godmother

fantasy

It is about a young woman named Elena, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. After the death of her mother, her father married a devious social climber with two daughters of her own. Not long after the marriage, Elena's father dies and her stepmother relegates her into the position of a house servant. She seems to be the perfect Cinderella candidate, except the prince of the land is many years younger than she - he is eleven. Also, she is 21, when most fairy-tale endings for girls normally happen at 16 or 18. One day, Elena's stepmother and stepsisters plan a temporary excursion out of town, for the purpose of ensnaring a new rich husband so they can pay the numerous debts they owe. Left alone in the house, Elena goes to the hiring fair in hopes of finding work as a servant. At the end of the day, a fairy godmother appears and offers to take Elena on as her apprentice. Elena accepts and moves to the godmother's cottage, where she meets the four brownies that help with household duties. The latter half of the book deals with Elena's time as a full-fledged godmother and her problems with turning an arrogant prince named Alexander into a decent person.

The Battle of the Labyrinth

fantasy

After being attacked by empousai cheerleaders at his new school, Percy returns to Camp Half-Blood and learns about the Labyrinth; part of the palace of King Minos in Crete that was designed by Daedalus. He also meets the camp's new sword master, Quintus. During a battle drill with Giant Scorpions at the camp, Annabeth and Percy accidentally find an entrance into the Labyrinth. Percy soon learns that Luke had used this entrance before and will try and lead his army through the Labyrinth straight into the heart of Camp Half-Blood. Annabeth reads the prophecy and comes back out of the Big House with a feeling of dread. When Percy and Annabeth privately meet afterwards in Athena's cabin, and Percy asks her if she is okay, she is moved to tears and holds out her arms. Percy hugs her, telling her that she shouldn't worry about whatever she was worrying about. What Percy doesn't know is that Annabeth thinks that Percy is going to die. Using the Labyrinth, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson, must find Daedalus to prevent Luke from obtaining Ariadne's String; the tool that would allow Luke to navigate the Labyrinth. Percy and his friends encounter Kampê (Campe), a half woman, half-dragon monster, and free her prisoner, Briares the Hekatonkheires (Hundred-Handed One), Tyson's idol. After an encounter with the goddess Hera and a battle at the farm of Geryon, the group is reunited with Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, who blames Percy for the death of his sister Bianca. Percy helps summon the spirit of Bianca, and Nico is convinced to put his grudge behind him by the ghost of his sister. The next day, however, Percy and his friends (without Nico) depart to find Hephaestus, hoping he would know the location of Daedulus. While travelling, the group gets separated, with Percy and Annabeth searching for Hephaestus and Tyson and Grover searching for Pan. After a meeting with Hephaestus, Annabeth and Percy go to Mt. St. Helens. There he finds telekhines, also known as "sea demons". He is discovered by the telkhines, who attack him. Percy finds Annabeth and they have a short argument during which Percy tells Annabeth to flee. Thinking that Percy is the one to die in the prophecy, Annabeth kisses Percy, tells him to be careful, and disappears. In an attempt to escape the telekhines, Percy causes Mt. St. Helens to erupt, pushing him out of the volcano, draining his energy in the process. When he awakens after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, he finds himself in the mythical island inhabited by Calypso. After being treated for burns by Calypso and returning to the mortal world, Percy gets the help he needs from a mortal girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who is able to see through the Mist; the magical veil that makes mortals see things differently than demigods. Grover finally finds Pan, but the god of the wild is dying and wants Grover to tell the other satyrs that they must save the natural world themselves. His spirit passes into all present, the satyr in particular, when he dies. They finally discover that Quintus, the mysterious new sword instructor at Camp Half-Blood, is actually Daedalus, who has attained extended life by putting his life-force, his animus, into a robot body and that Kronos has gained enough strength by Luke. He also possess Luke, using his body as a starter form. Kronos finds out that Nico di Angelo is a son of Hades and that he could be the child of the great prophecy, which states that a child of "Big Three" (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) would decide the fate of the gods. Luke has already reached Daedalus and attained Ariadne's string; using the magical instrument, he sends out Kronos's army to take Camp Half-Blood via the Labyrinth. While fighting a losing battle, the entire camp is either injured or killed, and Daedalus and Briares come out of the Labyrinth to help fight the battle and destroy Kampe. Grover rescues Camp Half-Blood by causing a Panic, which Pan had used once before, to scare away the enemy. After the battle, Daedalus sacrifices himself to close the Labyrinth, which is tied to his life. The camp say good bye to the dead, Nico leaves the camp, Grover travels trying to spread the message of Pan, Percy leaves for his 15th birthday and Nico comes by to offer him a proposal on how to defeat Kronos.

The Crack in Space

fantasy

On a future Earth (c.2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation, a portal is discovered that leads to a parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first Negro president of the United States, believes that the new "alter-Earth" could be colonized and become a home for the seventy million people that are being kept in cryopreservation. Known as bibs, these are people - mostly non-caucasians - who decided to be "put to sleep" until a time when the overpopulation problem is solved. Briskin is a social conservative, who does not support the Golden Doors of Bliss orbital brothel, and opposes widespread abortion access. There are two dominant US political parties, the "Republican Liberals" and the "States Rights Conservative Democrats" who run CLEAN, a racist frontgroup that opposes Briskin's candidacy, although higher-income white American voters support him. Terraforming becomes a pivotal election issue, until a warp drive malfunction in a "'scuttler" tube results in the discovery of an apparently uninhabited alternate world, an 'alter-Earth' where homo sapiens either never evolved or lost in competition with other early hominids. In this case, the point of divergence appears to have occurred between one to two million years ago, as homo erectus, also known as sinanthropus/pithecanthropus or Peking Man, is the dominant species. In reference to the latter designation, the explorers refer to the indigenous hominids of this world as "Pekes." There is a hasty initial colonization attempt. The minimum time period necessary for all of the tens of millions of "bibs" to emigrate is estimated to be twenty years. In order to cut this down to 5 years the rift is temporarily closed so a new power supply can be installed which will theoretically quadruple the width of the rift. When this action is completed, however, it is discovered that one hundred years has elapsed in the parallel world. During this time the conjoined twin businessman George Walt, who had run the Golden Doors of Bliss satellite brothel, had emigrated into the parallel world during initial colonization and set himself up as a "wind god". He spent those hundred years teaching and filling in technological gaps in the Peke's world as well as learning many new ideas from them. He also apparently assisted in sabotaging the colonization effort, as it would not exactly be in his own best interest were word to leak out that he was merely a mutated homo sapiens. After all the decades-consuming preparations have been completed, however, George Walt eventually sets a trap so that whenever the rift eventually re-opens, the "Pekes" can power it from their side and keep it from closing. This procedure allows the Pekes to begin an invasion of Earth, but they abruptly depart en masse when it is finally revealed, as George Walt originally feared, that their wind god is actually just a wind bag; that is to say, he's just another lying, deceiving, untrustworthy member of the species homo sapiens. The colonization attempt from Earth is thereby aborted, and Briskin, being newly elected, is left at the story's end to deal with the consequences during his next two presidential terms.

A Casa

fantasy

Some people who have harmed others in the past, receive an invitation to visit The house. There, they have a chance to make the things right with one condition: do not bring out those who have already gone.

Above the Veil

fantasy

While Shadowmaster Sushin maintains control over higher ranked chosen, Tal and Milla travel through the Castle's depths where they encounter the Freefolk, a group of the servant class Underfolk who possess a great hatred for all the Chosen. They also meet Lector Jarnil, a famous teacher. Tal and Milla learn more about the intricacies of Castle politics, including that Sushin, a Shadowmaster of the Orange, is the Dark Vizier of the Empress. He deals in unsavory matters and commands others under the authority of the Empress. They also learn that the Veil is maintained by the seven Keystones which lie at the top of each of the seven towers. Most of the Chosen leave the Castle due to the Day of Ascension. To prevent the Veil from failing, Tal, accompanied by the Freefolk leader Crow, climb the Red Tower and defeat the deadly Keeper. They also solve a puzzle of tiles to prevent any alarms from ringing out. Eventually they reach the Red Keystone and discover Lector Jarnil's cousing Lokar trapped inside. As Tal and Crow prepare to depart, they are assaulted by numerous unbound Spiritshadows. Tal is able to construct a miniature Veil in time to hide them, but accidentally binds Adras, his Spiritshadow, into it. As they near the Freefolk base, Crow injures Tal and flees with the Keystone. Tal recovers the keystone and Lokar convinces Tal to go to Aenir and consult the Empress to free Lokar. While Tal and Crow climb the tower, Milla returns to Odris by the labryinth of underground tunnels below the Castle. On her way, she discovers the skeleton where her Primary Sunstone partially originated. Scrutinizing it closer, she notices a long Violet fingernail, which she puts on. Knowing that she will give herself to the Ice, she breathes the Tenth Pattern to assure the completion of her task of getting a Primary Sunstone. On her way, she is attacked by Arla and a band of Shield Maidens for bringing Odris. Milla accidentally kills Arla with her talon. She is then judged by the Crones, who will decide her fate. After reviewing Milla's thoughts and dreams, the Crones debate and decide to attack the Castle to stop the Spiritshadow trade and save the Veil. The Crones choose Milla to lead the attack.

The Hunter's Moon

fantasy

Gwen, a Canadian, is visiting her cousin, Findabhair (finn-ah-veer), in Ireland. The two, who keep regular correspondence, share a deep love of Irish mythology. Since their youth, they have tried to find a doorway to another world called Faerieland. Now sixteen, they travel to Tara, without telling their parents, the ancient seat of the High Kings in Ireland in search of adventure. While they are there, the cousins challenge an ancient law by sleeping in a fairy mound. That night the King of Faeries, Finvara, comes to take them away. Since he is King of Dreams, he comes to them in their sleep and asks them to come with him. Findabhair says yes, but Gwen refuses. Therefore, since he is bound by an ancient law, the King only takes Findabhair, leaving Gwen to wake up wondering about her cousin's safety. Gwen decides to rescue her cousin from her fate, only to find she is happy. Gwen does not want her to stay with the faeries because they are immortal, partying teenagers. As Gwen tries to continuously find the Faeries, which is hard for the King is hindering her, she meets many good friends, including a middle-aged businessman, a farm girl, a king (who becomes her boyfriend) of an island, called Island Island, and even befriends the second in command of the Faeries, Midir. When she finally catches up with the faeries fast pace, she learns that either her cousin or her must be the sacrifice to an evil ancient creature known as Crom Cruac, the Great Worm, supposedly the serpent from Eden. Her cousin voluntarily chooses to be the sacrifice, upsetting Gwen and the King of Faeries, who has fallen in love with her. In the end, with the help of many friends, Findabhair decides not to be sacrificed, but to be the first person ever to fight the serpent. With their friends by their sides, Findabhair and Gwen attack the serpent after being equipped for battle by the Land of Light, but after a while Findabhair gets blasted with poison from the serpent and falls unconscious with her life on the edge. The King of Faeries, in a desperate act of love, gives himself up as the sacrifice. He is greatly mourned, and Midir becomes king. The friends decide to meet in a year. After a year, they meet again at Island Island and reminisce. Then they suddenly hear music. As they search for the source of the music, they find the king, alive. The worm had only taken his immortality instead of killing him, and now the faerie was mortal and without memory. They understand that it´s going to be hard for the king, because of his loss. But overjoyed as they are, they promise to explain everything to him.

The Princes of the Golden Cage

fantasy

Prince Amir lives in a lavish and beautiful cage. He lives in a palace with hundreds of his brothers, all barred by law from ever leaving the palace until he, or one of his brothers, becomes the next Sultan. Living under constant threat of death at the hands of his scheming brothers, Amir has chosen a life of solitude and study. His scholarly and alchemical pursuits bring him under suspicion when his brothers begin to die from seemingly supernatural means. Amir finds himself thrown together with his brother Erik, the son of a barbarian princess. Together they must discover the dark secret that is stalking the halls of their golden cage.

Genius Squad

fantasy

The book begins roughly 5 months after the events of Evil Genius. Cadel is now living with foster parents,in a state of legal limbo. Not knowing where he was born, his true father or where he was born. His life is made even worse due to his foster brother "Mace" (real name: Thomas) constantly bullying him. With no school to go to due to his questionable legal status, Cadel spends his time either on the computer, idling or visiting Sonja. The police,and FBI also occasionally turn up to question him on what he knows about Dr Darkkon, Prosper English and the Axis Institute. During these questionings Cadel meets Saul Greniaus, a detective who is now in charge of his case. His style puts him in conflict with Cadels social worker Fiona Currey. On his second visit to Sonja he is confronted by Trader and Judith.Trader and Judith attempt to convince Sonja and Cadel to join Genius Squad. An organisation formed to take down GENOME [a corporation founded by Darkkon] and which is funded by Rex Austin, an American millionaire who suspects the company murdered his son. Despite Cadels initial suspicions they may be working for Prosper, Cadel and Sonja agree to join Genius Squad. They learn that Genius squad is disguised as a youth home and they have other kids also working for the squad. While Saul and Fiona initially object, but they relent after a particularly heated confrontation with "Mace". Cadel arrives at the youth home, Saul and Fiona help him move his belongings. Cadel is introduced to Devin and Lexi[the Twins],Hamish Primose, Dot[the sister of Com from Evil Genius] and the rest of the adult staff. While genius squad works away, trying to avoid notice by Cadel's various body guards,they uncover a web of deceit, crimes and cerebral implants. During this time, "Mace" finds the address of the Genius Squad foster house and attempts to frame Cadel for theft by planting a stolen watch on him (a plan which ultimately fails and leads to Mace's arrest). Cadel also finds that Gazo Kovacs has made contact with GENOME, unaware of their sinister intentions. Unfortunately, GenoME manages to spring Prosper from jail and he immediately moves to kidnap Cadel. Cadel is taken to the house of Judith, one of the other members of Genius squad. From here, Prosper flees to a private air strip to leave the country after Cadel attempts to contact Saul for help. Saul gets a group of police officers down to the airport in time to save Cadel, but Prosper manages to get away. At this point, paternity tests show that Prosper English isn't really Cadel's father, even though he thought he was. Cadel's real father is Chester Cramp who runs Fountain Pharmeceuticals, another Darkkon corporation. However, with Chester sitting in an American Jail. Cadel agrees to being adopted by Saul and Fiona, who happened to be getting married. Saul finally finds out about Genius Squad, and though he is very upset that Cadel lied to him for so long, he agrees to let Genius Squad live on. His reasoning for this, is that he believes that Genius Squad might just be their best chance of finding Prosper and bringing him down once and for all.

Neverwhere

fantasy

Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, with a normal life. All this changes, however, when he stops to help a mysterious young girl who appears before him, bleeding and weakened, as he walks with his fiancée to dinner to meet her influential boss. The morning after Richard rescued the girl, Door, from the streets, she is greatly recovered, and sends him to find the Marquis de Carabas, a man who will be able to help Door escape two infamous and seemingly inhuman assassins, the Messrs; Croup and Vandemar. Richard brings the Marquis back to his apartment to meet Door, only to see both of them vanish immediately. Soon after, Richard begins to realize the consequences of his actions. He appears to have become invisible; he loses his job, where no one seems to recognize him, and his apartment is rented out to other people. Determined to set things right, Richard sets out for the world of London Below in search of Door. Richard’s journey takes him to the realm of the Rat-Speakers, who worship and perform tasks for rats, across the mysterious Night's Bridge, whose darkness kills one of Richard’s Rat-Speaker friends, Anesthesia, and eventually to the Floating Market, where he meets again with Door, who is holding an audition for bodyguards. Going to the floating market, a giant bazaar where people barter for all manner of junk and magical items, Richard realizes that London Below is not such a bad place. The legendary bodyguard and fighter "Hunter" joins their party, and the group, consisting of Door, the Marquis and Hunter, with Richard tagging along, sets out for the Earl's Court. Door and the Marquis have traveled to Door's home, and discovered a diary entry made by Door's father, which advises her to seek aid from the angel Islington. When the four reach the Earl's Court, on a mysterious underground train which follows its own bizarre schedule, the Marquis is forced to leave. This is due to an old grudge between himself and the Earl. The rest discover that they need to travel through the Angelus in order to reach Islington, and that the Angelus resides in the British Museum. Door and Richard travel to the Museum, while Hunter, due to a curse which prevents her from entering London Above, remains in the abandoned British Museum underground station. After some searching they find the Angelus, which Door "opens" using her family's Talent, and travel through it to the underground home of the angel. Islington explains that his position as protector of London Below is a punishment for the submersion of Atlantis, which was also under his care, and tells Door that he will help her learn the identity of those who killed her family, for a price. She and her company must retrieve a unique key from the Black Friars and bring it to the angel. The two return to the Museum and go below to reunite with Hunter. In the meantime, the Marquis seeks out Croup and Vandemar, exchanging a priceless Tang dynasty figurine for information regarding who ordered the murder of Door's family. The true price for this information, however, is his life; Croup and Vandemar capture, torture, and kill him, breaking the one-hour "head start" agreement that was part of their deal with the Marquis. Door, Richard, and Hunter proceed onward to the dwelling of the Black Friars. There, they are faced with a series of three ordeals; Hunter wins a test of strength, Door wins a test of intellect, and Richard, alone in history, wins a test of character. He was falsely convinced his adventures Below had all been a hallucination, but a trinket from his now-dead friend Anesthesia re-orients him. As a result, the three succeed in gaining the key. Richard’s ordeal greatly changes him, causing him to lose most of his self-doubts; he is now confident enough to interact with other beings of London Below. The three then travel to the Floating Market, where they are unable to find the Marquis, but where Hammersmith, a blacksmith friend of Door's is able to secretly forge a copy of the key won by Richard. Richard enlists the mysterious Lamia, one of the vampire-like Velvets as a guide. They travel on London Below’s Down Street, toward Islington. Door, Richard, Lamia, and Hunter make their way down the long path of Down Street. Old Bailey revives the Marquis. Weakened, the Marquis sets out himself, following Door and company. On Down Street, it is discovered that Lamia was a dangerous choice for a guide, because the price she demands of Richard for her services is higher than he can pay and yet live, but he is rescued by the Marquis. It is also discovered that Hunter long ago turned traitor to Door’s cause. She gives Door to Croup and Vandemar, in exchange for the magical spear she needs to hunt and slay the great Beast of London. Croup and Vandemar, with Door captive, travel downward, while Richard, the Marquis, and Hunter travel at a slower pace, all toward the great labyrinth through which they need to pass to reach Islington. In this labyrinth the Beast of London dwells. Hunter and Richard battle it, with Richard being the only survivor. Richard and the Marquis rush ahead, to the final confrontation between the parties, in which Islington’s true nature is revealed. Islington wishes to use Door and the key to force open the door to Heaven, where he seeks dominion over all the other angels as revenge for his banishment. After Richard is tortured by Croup and Vandemar, Door agrees to open the door, but she uses the copy of the key Richard won. The key does not open the door to Heaven, but instead to somewhere else, as far away as she could imagine. Islington, Croup and Vandemar are all sucked through the gateway before Door closes it. Door then uses the Black Friars' real key to allow Richard to travel back to London Above, where he finds himself restored to his normal life as it was before he first met Door. After returning home, Richard is happy for a time, but he realizes that his experiences have changed him, and that his old life and friends mean little or nothing to him now. He realizes that he is not satisfied with the regular world, and wants to return to London Below but does not know how to do it. He despairs of returning, feeling that he has ruined his life about as completely as possible, but in the end the Marquis provides a way back.

Castle Roogna

fantasy

Dor, son of Bink, is a 12 year old magician and next in line to inherit the throne of Xanth. To teach him the skills he will need to rule the kingdom, King Trent sends him through the tapestry on a mission 800 years into Xanth's past to find the ancient and mysterious Zombie Master. Dor travels to the past via the magic tapestry of Castle Roogna and inhabits the body of an invading mundane barbarian. While in the past Dor is accompanied by a (not normally) giant spider named Jumper, who had been drawn into the tapestry with him, and meets his current governess Millie the ghost, a short time before her unfortunate demise. Dor must use his magic and every other resource he possesses to help beat back an invading wave of mundanes and find a way to restore Millie's zombie lover to life back in the present.Turns out the Zombie Master is Millies zombie lover and ends up providing the cure for his own curse.

Jingo

fantasy

With the opening of the novel, the island of Leshp, which had been submerged under the Circle Sea for centuries, rises to the surface. Its position, exactly halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Al Khali (the capital of Klatch), makes the island a powerful strategical point for whoever lays claim to it, which both cities do. In Ankh-Morpork, a Klatchian Prince named Khufurah is parading through Ankh-Morpork, where he will be presented with a Degree in Sweet Fanny Adams (Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci), but an assassination attempt occurs, and the Prince is wounded. Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, begins investigating the crime, originally suspecting both a Klatchian named 71-Hour Ahmed and a senior Morporkian peer, Lord Rust, of being involved. The attempted assassination breaks off relations between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch as Prince Khufurah's brother effectively declares war on the city of Ankh-Morpork. At this point, Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, resigns—apparently of his own free will—and Lord Rust takes command of the city. Vetinari has refused to become involved in the war with Klatch, due to the fact Ankh-Morpork does not have an army to stand against any opposing forces (the reason given being that killing enemy soldiers makes it difficult to sell them things afterwards), but Rust declares Martial law and orders the city's noble families to revive their old private regiments. Vimes, refusing to follow Rust (whom he considers to be a pillock) stands down as Commander of the Watch. Captain Carrot resigns as well, as do Sergeant Colon, Sergeant Detritus and Corporal Angua. The idea of putting the watch under the command of Corporal Nobbs is rejected by the ruling Council of Guild leaders and the Watch is disbanded. Vimes then recruits the Watch into his own private army regiment, reasoning that, as an official noble, he is entitled to do so by law and by Lord Rust's command, with the group remaining independent as knights legally fall under command of the king or his duly-appointed representatives, neither of which exist in Ankh-Morpork. Angua, following 71-Hour Ahmed, is captured by the Klatchians and taken to Klatch. Carrot, rather than rush off to save her, reports back to Vimes, who gets his private army to head for Klatch. Meanwhile, Nobby and Sergeant Colon have been recruited by Vetinari and his pet inventor, Leonard of Quirm, on a secret mission of their own, unknown to Vimes. Vetinari, Leonard of Quirm, Colon, and Nobby end up in Leonard's "Going-Under-the-Water-Safely Device" and discover that Leshp is actually floating on top of a huge bubble of gas (suggested to be methane or some other poisonous gas), and that the gas is escaping from said bubble, meaning that Leshp will, ultimately, sink back under the sea again. Vimes catches up with 71-hour Ahmed and has, by this time, figured out that Ahmed is a fellow policeman. Ahmed and his band of Klatchian D'regs and Vimes army head towards Gebra, in Klatch, where the war is due to start. To help blend in, Vetinari, Nobby and Fred Colon get hold of some Klatchian clothing, though Nobby ends up wearing the costume of a dancing girl and gets in touch with his feminine side. The three also head to Gebra. Arriving at Gebra they discover that Carrot has convinced the two armies to get together and play a game of football (he has an inflatable football in his backpack for just such an emergency), Vimes is preparing to arrest the Klatchian Prince and Lord Rust for various breaches of the peace (such as being prepared for war) and 71-hour Ahmed is supporting him. Vetinari prevents an international incident by ostensibly declaring the surrender of Ankh-Morpork and offering war reparations. Vetinari is returned to Ankh-Morpork, under arrest and in disgrace, but as Leshp has vanished back under the sea again, the treaty was to be signed in a non-existent territory and thus the charge of treason is invalid. Sam Vimes is informed that Vetinari has been "reminded" that the old rank of Commander was the same as the old rank of Duke. He objects, claiming that only a King can make a Duke, but then realises that Carrot was speaking to Vetinari. Since Carrot is, of course, very much not the King of Ankh-Morpork his reminding of Vetinari is all that is required for Vimes to get his new position and rank. Vimes "accidentally" loses his "dis-organiser" (given to him by his wife) which kept giving him incorrect information. It is explained that, had Vimes reacted slightly differently in the beginning- staying in Ankh-Morpork rather than attempting to follow Ahmed and rescue Angua-, the whole history of the Ankh-Morpork VS Klatch war would have gone very differently. The dis-organiser meets Death at the end, but Death rejects it. Instead, he drops it into the sea, and it is swallowed by a shark where it may not have the most interesting calendar of events to deal with, but at least it finds things easy to organise.

The Master Key

fantasy

The protagonist is a boy named Rob Joslyn. His age is not specified. Baum dedicated the book "To My Son, Robert Stanton Baum," who was born in 1886 and would thus have been about fifteen at the time it was published. Rob, we are told, is in truth, a typical American boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. The mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. Moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. Life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. We are introduced to Rob as an electrical experimenter whose father encourages him and sees that he "never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort." A "net-work[sic] of wires soon ran throughout the house," and the house is full of "bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. And there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which Rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed." Rob loses track of the elaborately interconnected wires, and trying to get a cardboard house to light up, he "experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination." There is a bright flash, and a being who calls himself the Demon of Electricity appears. He tells Rob that he has accidentally "touched the Master Key of Electricity" and is entitled to "to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks." Rob protests that he does not know what to ask for, and the Demon agrees to select the gifts himself. During the first week, the Demon gives Rob three gifts: *A silver box of food tablets, each one of which provides sufficient nourishment for a whole day. *A "small tube" which can direct "an electric current" at a foe, rendering him unconscious for the period of one hour. As the story unfolds, it appears that this tube has no limit to the number of times it can be fired, and has other capabilities (such as breaking locks when fired at them). *A wristwatch-sized transportation device, which allows the wearer to fly at any height and travel at high speeds in any direction, when it is working properly. It is, however, somewhat fragile and becomes damaged and unreliable during Rob's adventures, creating predicaments for him. During the second week, the Demon gives Rob three additional gifts: *A "garment of protection," which renders him invulnerable to bullets, swords, or other physical attack. *A "record of events," which provides remote views of important events taking place at any part of the world at any time within the last twenty-four hours; *A "character marker," a set of spectacles: "while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter 'G,' the evil the letter 'E.' The wise will be marked with a 'W' and the foolish with an 'F.' The kind will show a 'K' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'C.'" Over the next two weeks, Rob experiences adventures exploring the use of the Demon's gifts, but eventually concludes that neither he nor the world is ready for them. On the third week, Rob rejects the Demon's gifts and tells him to bide his time until humankind knows how to use them. The Demon leaves. With a light heart, Rob concludes that he made the right decision, and that "It's no fun being a century ahead of the times!"

Air

fantasy

Air is the story of a town's fashion expert Chung Mae, a smart but illiterate peasant woman in a small village in the fictional country of Karzistan (loosely based on the country of Kazakhstan), and her suddenly leading role in reaction to dramatic, worldwide experiments with a new information technology called Air. Air is information exchange, not unlike the Internet, that occurs in everyone's brain and is intended to connect the world. After a test of Air is imposed on Mae's unprepared mountain town, everyone and everything changes, especially Mae who was deeper into Air than any other person. Afterwords, Mae struggles to prepare her people for what is to come while learning all about the world outside her home.

Ashling

fantasy

The powerful Misfit Elspeth is sent to Sutrium, the seat of the ruling totalitarian Council, to seal and alliance between the secret community at Obernewtyn and the rebel forces. Yet her journey takes her far beyond the borders of the Land, across the sea into the heart of the mysterious desert region, Sador. There she seeks help to destroy the weaponmachines but before her dark quest can begin, she must learn the truth of her dream: why the Beforetimers destroyed their world...

Conan the Rebel

fantasy

Conan the Rebel details the involvement of Conan and his lover, the pirate Belit, in a rebellion of an eastern province of the kingdom of Stygia. Chronologically, it occurs between chapters 1 and 2 of the Robert E. Howard Conan story "Queen of the Black Coast".

The Day After Judgment

fantasy

In the first book, a wealthy arms manufacturer comes to a black magician, Theron Ware, with a strange request: he wishes to release all the demons from hell for one night to see what might happen. The book includes a lengthy description of the summoning ritual, and a detailed description of the grotesque demons as they appear. Tension between Ware and Catholic white magicians arises over the terms and conditions of a covenant that provides for observers and limitations on interference with demonic workings. Black Easter ends with Baphomet announcing to the participants that the demons can not be compelled to return to hell: the War is over, and God is dead. The Day After Judgment develops and extends the characters from the first book. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth. In a lengthy Miltonian speech at the end of the novel, Satan Mekratrig explains that, compared to humans, demons are good, and that if perhaps God has withdrawn Himself, then Satan beyond all others was qualified to take His place and, if anything, would be a more just god. It has been suggested that Blish got the name for his black magician from the titular character in Harold Frederic's 1896 novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware.

Lirael

fantasy

Lirael sees herself as an outcast within the world of the Clayr. With raven-black hair, a pale complexion, pointy face, muddy-brown eyes and unknown paternal parentage, she differs physically from the generally deep-tanned, fair-haired, round-faced and blue- or green-eyed seers around her. Most hurtful, though, is her lack of the Clayr's birthright, the Sight (the ability to see into the future or possible futures). The fact that this bloodline trait has not shown itself at the usual age of around eleven, as well as the absence of any truly understanding or sympathetic other in her life, leaves Lirael emotionally distressed and very unhappy until her appointment to the Clayr's Library on her fourteenth birthday. Through her solitary work in forgotten corners of the mystical library in the Clayr's Glacier, Lirael begins to unlock the keys to embarking upon an apparently predestined adventure of utmost importance. She also summons the Disreputable Dog, whom she befriends and who helps her in her explorations. Five years later, across the Wall in Ancelestierre, Prince Sameth has an encounter with the necromancer Hedge and his summoned Dead Hands, which leaves him injured both spiritually and physically. His father Touchstone arrives to take him back to the Old Kingdom and the safety of the palace in Belisaere. Here he is expected to continue his studies to follow his mother as the Abhorsen, a future he is mortally afraid of, especially since his encounter with Hedge. Their paths cross as Nicholas Sayre, an Ancelestierran friend of Sameth, crosses the border into the Old Kingdom and then to the Red Lake in search of the Lightning Trap, a region in the south west of the Kingdom where the royal rule does not extend and the Clayr cannot See. Sameth flees the palace and his sister to go and look for Nick. He gets into trouble on the way and Mogget turns up, to his surprise and suspicion. Meanwhile, Lirael finds, on her nineteenth birthday, a non-Clayr magical inheritance of the artifacts of a Remembrancer (one who looks into the past) and is quite swiftly dispatched to fulfill a very recent vision the Clayr had of her in a boat on the Red Lake with Nick. She sails down the River Ratterlin and, by coincidence, meets up with Sam, who had to use a bathtub to escape the Dead who had been following him. They continue on to the Red Lake, but are nearly intercepted by Chlorr of the Mask and the Dead Hands assigned to her. They decide to proceed to Abhorsen's House to rest and generally regroup. Once there, a strange set of revelations take place: Sameth is given a surcoat with the Royal Blood's tower and the Wallmaker's trowel, and Lirael is given a surcoat with the Clayr star and the Abhorsen key. Lirael realizes, with the help of memories she has Remembered, that she must be half-Abhorsen — a fact confirmed by Mogget, as only a child of both Clayr and Abhorsen may become a Remembrancer. The novel ends with Lirael and Sameth deciding to go on to find Nick and Hedge at the Red Lake.

Swords and Deviltry

fantasy

The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords and Deviltry introduce the duo and their relationship ("Induction"), present incidents from their early lives in which they meet their first lady-loves (Fafhrd in "The Snow Women", the Gray Mouser in "The Unholy Grail"), and relate how afterwards in the city of Lankhmar the two met and allied themselves with each other, and lost their first loves through their defiance of the local Thieves' Guild ("Ill Met in Lankhmar").

The Clan Corporate

fantasy

In this installment, Miriam Beckstein spends most of her time in the first parallel world, a virtual prisoner. She has ruffled enough feathers and stirred up enough trouble that her uncle, the clan's head of security, keeps her well isolated, and unable to travel unchaperoned. At one point in the story, she manages to escape surveillance for a short time, but she quickly gets herself back in trouble, and her activities are strongly circumscribed thereafter. There's a subplot involving Mike Fleming, a cop who dated Miriam a couple of times. Mike has been pulled into a government task force that is investigating the clan's activities and plans with the help of a member of the clan's security apparatus who turned his back on the clan at the end of book two. There are occasional references to the moral and security implications of holding him prisoner outside the criminal justice system, but they are not explored in any depth.

The Gorgon's Gaze

fantasy

The Gorgon's Gaze takes place after the events in Secret of the Sirens, and follows the story of Connie and Col. Mallins Wood is under danger, and it is home to the only gorgon left in the world. Connie might be able to help, but the problem is... she's been taken away by her great-aunt Godiva! Connie's parents have asked Godiva and her brother Hugh to stop their world travels to take Connie away from Evelyn and "wean her off of the Society." Thus, Connie is now living in the town of Chartmouth with Godiva and Hugh, where she's denied contact with any mythical creatures. Meanwhile, Col is introduced to the Gorgon, his mother's companion species. On his second visit, Col is taken over by a mysterious creature - one who appears to be a Pegasus, but doesn't feel like one. Col finds himself to be the property of Kullervo, the evil shapeshifter! Connie must go to save her friend, while remaining safe herself and not letting her great-aunt know she's gone.

Watership Down

fantasy

In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely eluding the Owsla, the warren's military caste. The travelling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, previously an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory, with Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla, as the strongest rabbits among them. Fiver's visions promise a safe place in which to settle, and the group eventually finds Watership Down, an ideal location to set up their new warren. They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell, also from the Sandleford Warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans. Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realises there are no does (female rabbits), thus making the future of their new home uncertain. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does. Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel and Pipkin successfully raid the nearby Nuthanger Farm to rescue a group of hutch rabbits there, returning with two does and a buck. When the emissary returns, Hazel and his rabbits learn Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort; Hazel's rabbits barely return alive. However, the group does manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join. Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down. The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but soon Woundwort's army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren. Through Bigwig's bravery and loyalty and Hazel's ingenuity, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort. The story's epilogue tells the reader of how Hazel, dozing in his burrow one "chilly, blustery morning in March" many years later, is visited by the rabbit folk hero El-ahrairah, who invites Hazel to join his Owsla. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with El-ahrairah, "running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."

Quest for the Well of Souls

fantasy

In Exiles at the Well of Souls, Mavra Chang was captured by the Olborn, who use magical stones to convert beings into beasts of burden. The Olborn were interrupted partway through transforming Chang, leaving her partially transformed. Eleven years later, Chang remains an involuntary guest in the native hex of the human equivalents on the Well, Glathriel. After multiple attempts to escape, she has been reconditioned to accept her existence, and a maimed Glathrielite, Joshi, has undergone a similar partial transformation in Olborn to serve as a companion for Mavra. Inspired by the Diviner and the Rel, the Northern being that crossed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere in Midnight at the Well of Souls, several competing factions have discovered that the Northern beings inhabiting the hex of Yugash can "possess" a Southerner and allow him to pass into Yugash. In Exiles at the Well of Souls, two ships were crash-landed on the Well World. The first landed in the South, and was destroyed at the end of the war in Exiles. The second landed in the north, and now the factions that fought the war in Exiles are girding for a race to the second ship. Several other players who participated in the drama in Exiles are also introduced. Antor Trelig was a politician as well as the head of the sponge syndicate, in control of a significant fraction of the council governing human space. He was transformed at the Well World into a Makiem, a giant frog-like creature. Renard was the librarian on Trelig's resort planetoid of New Pompeii, which was subsequently transformed into the home of Obie, the supercomputer capable of using Markovian physics to manipulate the universe. Renard was transformed into an Agitar, a blue-colored satyr who rides winged horses. Ben Yulin was the assistant to Dr. Gilgram Zinder, Obie's designer, as well as an agent for Trellig. Yulin was transformed into a Dasheen, a minotaur. After a showdown between Mavra's party and Yulin's party, the remnants agree to a truce with Yulin and return in the ship to Obie. In addition to Mavra and Yulin, the other members of the party are Renard, a Yugash, a Bozog (another northern species, they moved the ship from the non-tech hex it landed in to their own high-tech hex), a Lata (a southern species resembling a pixie) named Vistaru (previously Vardia Diplo), and a Yaxa (a southern species resembling a giant butterfly) named Wooley (previously Wu Julee and Kally Tonge). Once they arrive, Ben Yulin attempts to take over Obie, but the computer assists Mavra and the others in destroying the circuit that forces Obie to obey Yulin. Obie returns to human space, and when a Council fleet arrives to destroy him, he fakes his own destruction and departs with Mavra to explore the rest of the universe as partners.

Avilion

fantasy

Avilion takes place after the events in Mythago Wood. Steven Huxley and the mythago Guiwenneth have been living in Ryhope wood where they are raising their two children, each half-human, half-mythago. The older boy, Jack, wishes to know about the outside world while the younger girl, Yssobel, dreams about her uncle Christian, who vanished into Lavondyss at the end of Mythago Wood. Despite being comfortably settled and living an idyllic agrarian lifestyle, events at hand will change the family's future.

The Forest King

fantasy

After the trial of Vedvedsica, General Balif is sent on a mission to ascertain the true danger of a new race of small humanoids infiltrating the eastern boarders of Silvenesti. He travels east with an unlikely group. His two loyal servants, Lofotan and Artyrith, both formidable warriors, and Mathi, and Treskan unsure where their loyalties lie.

Everlost

fantasy

Allie and Nick both die in a car crash. They're supposed to go towards that light at the end of the tunnel, but they bump into each other and get knocked into a mysterious world between life and death called Everlost. The world is filled with terror, and unexpected twists for the souls that reside there. Both Nick and Allie want their lives back, so they start exploring this new world, hoping to find a way back to their normal lives. There is a catch, however: If they stand still in the living world for too long, they will sink into Earth. The longer they stay in Everlost, the more they forget about themselves in the real world. In the beginning of the book, they are saved by a boy named Lief, who tells them that they are called "Afterlights", who cannot walk where the living walk. They are somewhat like ghosts. He warns them of a dreaded and evil monster, McGill, before they make their way to New York City. There, they meet a Mary Hightower, the "mother" of Afterlights who keeps many Afterlights safe, and author of hundreds of books on living in Everlost. She lives with the children under her care in the destroyed World Trade Center. This is because things that are much beloved in the world can cross into Everlost if they are destroyed. They settle down, but Allie is not content with the way things are, so she sets out to see if she has special powers. Allie notices other Afterlights at the Twin Towers keep repeating and doing the same exact thing everyday. Lief gets stuck playing the Pac-Man arcade game non-stop and she has to pry him from the game to drag him along with her. They meet The Haunter in a factory that crossed over to Everlost. Allie gets Lief and Nick captured by The Haunter and it is shown that Allie can pick up living things and also possess or 'skinjack' as it is called in the book. In her adventures, she learns how to use her own powers. These adventures tell Nick his purpose while revealing the secret plan of Mary Hightower and the real identity of the McGill, Mikey McGill, Mary(really Megan) Hightower's younger brother. Mary, also known by others as the Sky Witch, has been lying to the children, stealing the coins they invariably have in their possession, which will allow them to leave Everlost, a metaphor for the coins given to pay Charon. Nick has also received the nickname "Chocolate Ogre" because of how he has a chocolate stain on his face, and Mary spreads rumors about how he sends Afterlights away by luring them in with the smell of chocolate. Allie outsmarts the McGill, who is unmasked by his sister. Allie, traveling home, is later saved by Mikey, who takes her the rest of the way home.

The Gates of Thorbardin

fantasy

The major plotline of The Gates of Thorbardin is that there once existed a hidden entrance to the Dwarven realm of Thorbardin. During the War of the Lance, this gate could be used as an entrance by the forces of Takhisis to destroy the Dwarven kingdom. The major character in this novel is a Dwarf by the name of Chane Feldstone. Chane comes to the knowledge of the secret entrance to Thorbardin through a dream. Chane doesn't know of his heritage, but he learns that he is a direct decedent of Grallen of Thorbardin who died fighting the mage Fistandantilus years before. Chane learns that his ancestor Grallen was attempting to seal the hidden entrance to Thorbardin using a powerful artifact known as Spellbinder which was once used in conjunction with another Gemstone named by the Dwarves Pathfinder to contain the magic of the Graygem of Gargath. The main character picks up a number of other characters such as Wingover, Chestal Thicketsway, Bobbin, and Jillian Firestoke in his travels. Among other notable events, Chane comes across the original location of the Graygem in Waykeep Valley and encounters the Irda. He also encounters the remains of the Hill Dwarves and Mountain Dwarves encased ice since the Dwarfgate Wars. Chane also finds the Helm of Grallen in the remains of rubble which were blown away from the tower of Zhaman. A Secondary plotline revolve around the renegade mage Caliban who was hunted down and killed years before by members of the three orders of magic. Caliban pulled his own heart out during the encounter and his shriveled heart remained as a power artifact used by the major antagonist in the story Kolanda Darkmoor. Caliban through Kolanda seeks the death of the three mages that hunted him down and killed him years before. Glenshadow the Wanderer, who wears the Red robes of Neutrality was the one one of the three mages to survive the encounter with Caliban. Caliban and Glenshadow encounter each other near the end of the novel. At the end of the novel Chane with the help of his traveling companions is able to discover the location of the hidden entrance, which is near Sky's End Peak near Northgate, by using the gem Pathfinder and the Helm of Grallen. Chane places Spellbinder inside the hidden entrance and the entrance is sealed from the outside as the result of a terrible magic storm. All the major benefactors in the story survive, the hidden entrance is sealed against magic (through Spellbinder which is now buried) and the Helm of Grallen passes into the realm of Thorbardin.

A Clan in Need

fantasy

The story starts out with Ravenpaw waking up in the Moonstone Cave. Barley is asleep, dreaming. When he wakes up with a shriek, Ravenpaw wonders what is wrong. Barley tells his friend that he was dreaming of how, when he lived in BloodClan, he had three littermates. After leaving their mother to fend for themselves, Barley and his sister, Violet, continued living together. It is against BloodClan rules for families to stay together, so when they were caught, they were brought before Scourge. As a punishment, Violet was attacked and nearly killed by her and Barley's brothers, Jumper and Hoot, who had renamed themselves Ice and Snake. After Barley is finished, Ravenpaw tells him that ThunderClan will help them. And with that they set off. But, as they are crossing WindClan territory, they encounter a patrol of warriors. At first, the patrol thinks that Barley and Ravenpaw have kidnapped Crowkit, a young gray tom that can't seem to keep out of trouble. When the patrol's leader, Mudclaw, sees that it's Ravenpaw and Barley, he tells the patrol that these cats are friends. Ravenpaw promises to help look for Crowkit and the patrol leaves. Ravenpaw suggests that they travel to ThunderClan through Fourtrees, that way Barley can see what it's like when there isn't a fight going on there. As they pass by the Great Rock, they find Crowkit struggling to climb to the top. Suddenly, there is a screech from nearby. Mudclaw's patrol has crossed the ThunderClan border to accuse Dustpelt's patrol of stealing Crowkit. A fight is narrowly avoided when Ravenpaw and Barley appear with the kit. Their mission accomplished, the WindClan patrol leaves with Crowkit. Reluctantly, Dustpelt agrees to take Barley and Ravenpaw to Firestar. When they reach the ThunderClan Camp, they are greeted by several cats including Brightheart. As they pass by the Nursery, they meet Sandstorm and her daughters, Squirrelkit and Leafkit. As Ravenpaw congratulates Sandstorm about the kits, Firestar appears. He is curious to know what's bought Barley and Ravenpaw to the Clan. They tell him everything, and Firestar tells them he will help. But first they must rest. As they are resting, somebody calls for Cinderpelt. Ravenpaw goes to Firestar to find out what's wrong. He learns that BloodClan cats have been attacking patrols. Firestar must help ThunderClan before he can send anyone to save the farm. The next morning, Ravenpaw and Barley go on a hunting patrol with Graystripe and Cloudtail. As they return, they are attacked by BloodClan cats. There is a short fight, during which one of the BloodClan cats, Snipe, seems to recognise Barley. When another ThunderClan patrol arrives, the BloodClan cats flee. The prey was ruined in the fight. When they return to camp, Barley hints to Ravenpaw that he might have known Snipe before. Shortly afterwards, Firestar and Graystripe ask Barley for help in finding BloodClan's home in the Twolegplace. He might remember. Barley takes offense and runs off into the forest. Ravenpaw goes to him and tells him that he must tell Firestar anything he knows. ThunderClan is starving. The next morning, Rainpaw and Sorrelpaw leave to go hunting. As Ravenpaw tries to think of ways to coax information out of Barley, Rainpaw runs back into camp. He says that they were attacked by BloodClan and that Sorrelpaw is hurt. They find her and they bring her back to camp. Barley sees that what happened to him and Violet is happening to other cats. With that thought in mind, he goes to Firestar to tell everything he knows. Barley tells Firestar about Snipe and that he really doesn't know much more. Ravenpaw suggests that Violet might know more. After all, she still lives in Twolegplace. The next day, Ravenpaw and Barley leave to find her. When they do, she tells them that BloodClan may be getting organized again. Violet leads them to a friend of hers, Mitzi. Mitzi's son, Fritz, was kidnapped by BloodClan one moon before. She followed the cats when they took him and learned where their home was. She gladly takes them there. Violet, Barley, and Ravenpaw return to ThunderClan to tell Firestar where the BloodClan cats live. He gathers a battle patrol and tells them to show no mercy during the fight to come. The patrol slips out of camp and heads to the place that Mitzi showed them. When they arrive, they find all of BloodClan assembled before Ice and Snake. Violet and Barley's brothers are the new leaders of BloodClan and suddenly, surprisingly, Violet walks forward to them. She calls to them, telling them that their names are Jumper and Hoot and that she is their sister. Seeming to have forgotten about their kin, Ice and Snake are ready to let BloodClan slaughter her when Barley leaps up too. Upon sight of their brother, they are reminded of that day, seasons ago, when they tried to kill their sister. Now, they want to try again. That's when Firestar gives the order to attack. BloodClan and ThunderClan become a single, fighting mass. And then, suddenly, the battle is over. Ice and Snake start walking over to them when suddenly Barley and Violet pounce, catching their brothers by surprise. Seeing that they are about to be beaten, they plead for mercy. Barley says that they've been attacking cats and stealing prey, so now they must pay. Ice and Snake try to wriggle out of punishment by claiming that they never did anything. It was the rest of BloodClan. With that, BloodClan turns on them and they drive their leaders away. Only one cat stays behind. It is Fritz, Mitzi's son. He, Barley and Violet leave to go back to Violet's housefolk and Fritz's housefolk. Firestar promises Ravenpaw that when his clan has rested, he will lead a patrol to drive Willie and his group of rogues from the farm.

Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz

fantasy

The story opens with a dinner party, attended by seven of the characters from Baum's inaugural book. Present are the famous foursome, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, along with the Wizard, Jellia, and the Soldier with the Green Whiskers. (Baum named the latter personage Omby Amby, but Thompson re-christened him Wantowin Battles.) The dinner is hosted by the Wizard, preparatory to his introduction of his newest invention. After a long session of reminiscence that fills the first chapter, the Wizard takes his guests to a glass-domed building that contains two gleaming silver aircraft, the newly-created ozoplanes. The Wizard has named them the "Ozpril" and the "Oztober." The guests enthusiastically pile into the craft to inspect them. The Soldier with the Green Whiskers ate twenty-nine pickles at dinner, and is suddenly overcome by a violent cramp. He slams into the control panel of the Oztober, depressing the up, south, fast, spin, spiral, zig, zag, slow, and circle buttons simultaneously. The Oztober zooms off into the sky, headed for parts unknown, with the Soldier, the Tin Man, and Jellia on board. The Wizard, startled and appalled, takes the Ozpril in pursuit and in search of the Oztober, accompanied by Dorothy, Lion, and Scarecrow. Enduring a chaotic flight, the resourceful Tin Man eventually gets the ozoplane under control; he decides to teach himself to fly the craft, and then return to the Emerald City. In the dawn of the new day, he sights an unknown country in the sky, and lands the plane there. He enthusiastically but undiplomatically claims the place for Ozma as a colony of the Land of Oz. The country, however, has a name, and inhabitants, and a touchy, egotistical, and aggressive ruler: Stratovania is the domain of King Strutoovious the Seventh. (He calls himself "Strut of the Strat" for short.) This king quickly decides to turn the tables and conquer Ozma and Oz. He holds the new arrivals prisoner — though his hostility is somewhat mollified by his affection for Jellia; he likes her smooth brown hair, so different from the upstanding "electric hair" of the Stratovanians. Strat impulsively names Jellia his "starina" — a pun on "czarina." (Similar puns flow thick and fast: the new starina is addressed as "your Skyness" and "your Stratjesty.") Despite his affection for Jellia, Stratoovious assembles his army of Blowmen and forces the Tin Man to pilot the ozoplane back to the Emerald City. The other Ozites, left behind, try to find a way to counter this threatened invasion of Oz. Jellia tries to use her influence as starina — but faces the opposition of Strut's existing queen, Kabebe. Jellia and Wantowin are in danger on being thrown off the edge of Stratovania, when the Wizard and company arrive in the second ozoplane. But the plane is blown up by the Blowmen, and the Ozites have to leap off the edge of the skyland to save themselves. The Wizard uses the magic in his "kit-bag" (it has green eyes and emits feline yowls) to cushion their fall. The Ozites land at Red Top Mountain in the Quadling Country. The place's rightful ruler, Princess Azarine, has escaped the clutches of the usurper Bustado (an even worse villain than Strut) who captures the Ozites. This villain sends the Wizard in search of Azarine, and holds the rest of the party hostage. Yet the hostages escape, and meet up with the Wizard, Azarine, and her protectors, the great stag Shagomar and his wife Dear Deer. The group reaches the palace of Glinda, though the sorceress is absent with Ozma; the Wizard is able to use Glinda's magic to combat the Stratovanian invasion. Strut and his forces reach the Emerald City; the residents flee or hide. Strut tries to obtain Ozma's Magic Belt from her safe, but is frustrated; the Wizard has united with Ozma and Glinda to rescue the Belt, the most powerful magical talisman of Oz. Once in possession of the Belt, Ozma sends Strut's army home and ends his bid for conquest. She turns the usurper Bustado into a red squirrel, so that Azarine can resume her rightful place after enjoying an Emerald City vacation. Thompson gives her protagonists some odd adversaries, including sky creatures called spikers that are something like iridescent octopuses, and a large fierce bugbear that is half insect and half bear in form. And she indulges in extravagant nonsensical tech talk, as with the Wizard's "elutherated altitude pills" and Glinda's "triple-edged, zentomatic transporter." She also misuses the word "entomophagous" to mean insect-like; it actually means something that eats insects.

The Infernal City

fantasy

The Infernal City takes places in 4E 41 (40 years after the events of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles.) Tamriel is a continent inhabited by many races, and is ruled by an imperial authority. A floating city known as Umbriel is devastating Tamriel. Any person caught beneath Umbriel dies, and is resurrected as undead. Annaïg Hoïnart, a seventeen-year-old Breton girl, and her Argonian friend Mere-Glim, escape from Black Marsh just ahead of Umbriel. They witnessed Umbriel moving toward the city, and after Glim is overcome by an urge to run back to the city, Annaïg During their journey, Sul and Attrebus met a group of Khajiit who joined them. Sul explained to Attrebus that he intended to short-cut through Oblivion to beat Umbriel to Vvardenfell. He explains that Umbriel was undoubtedly a product of Vuhon, the man who had engineered the ingenium, the device that had kept the Ministry of Truth in place in Vivec's absence. He killed Sul's love, Ilzheven, and caused the Ministry of Truth to crash into Vvardenfell, in turn causing Red Mountain to erupt and destroy the entire island. Sul and Vuhon both were thrown into Oblivion, and a being named Umbra took that opportunity of the barrier between worlds opening to throw a sword, also called Umbra, into Tamriel, preventing Clavicus Vile from imprisoning him in it again. Sul is looking for the sword to destroy Umbriel. After nearly being recaptured, Sul opens a portal to Oblivion and he, Treb, and the Khajiit entered the planes of Oblivion, traveling through different planes, noticing the differences through the pain of the transitions. The path was interrupted in Hircine's plane, and Sul guided the party through Oblivion as Hircine and his drivers hunted them. One of the Khajiit was killed during the chase, and those remaining stayed behind at the end of the course to delay Hircine from reaching Attrebus and Sul. Attrebus and Sul exited Oblivion directly into the ruined Vivec City. There, Sul explained that Azura told him he'd find Umbra here, and that it must be what Vuhon was after. He found that the place where Umbra should have been was gone, and spoke with the spirit of Ilzheven. He questioned her about Umbra, and she told him that Dunmer found it and took it north, toward the Sea of Ghosts. As Sul wandered the ruined city, Attrebus kept an eye out for Umbriel and opened Coo, finding Annaïg looking back at him. She told him that she couldn't wait for him, that she and Glim would use her flying potions and leave Umbriel. When she closed her locket, a few moments later Attrebus saw the bottom of Umbriel poking out from the bottom of the clouds, heading toward them and very close. Annaïg, working in Toel's kitchen on Umbriel, received a bucket of ingredients from a skraw that contained her locket, and inside it a message from Glim. She responded to Glim’s note and they met the following midnight, at the dock. They consumed flying potions Annaïg had made, and begin to fly away from Umbriel, only to find that they had become like the other residents of the city; if they traveled too far from Umbriel, they began to lose their substance. Though Colin had been pulled from the Attrebus investigation, he continued investigating. The last person Gulan had spoken to, Letine Arese, an assistant to the Prime Minister, made her way deep into the Market District and entered a building, and Colin climbed a nearby building in order to reach a third-story window. He entered a small empty bedroom and made his way downstairs until he heard the voices of Arese and a male. She seemed concerned that the "job" was not accomplished as it should have been. Colin learned that a courier brought news to the Emperor that the Prince lived. As their conversation escalated, among the screams of men it seemed that Arese changed form into a sort of beast. It moved past him, up the stairs, then a few moments later came back down and exited through the door. The building was burning, and Colin escaped through the window. Unable to search the house, he wondered why Arese wanted the Prince dead, and why she didn't accomplish the task herself. Sul was drawn back to Attrebus by his screams, to find Umbriel nearly upon them. They attempted to move back to their entry position, but were transported to Umbriel, suspended in a type of spiderweb-like net in front of Vuhon. As they spoke, Sul accused Vuhon of murdering his love, Ilzheven, and destroying Vvardenfell; Vuhon contested that it was actually Sul that did that. It was revealed that Ilzheven had a very special type of soul, and Vuhon was using her to power the ingenium, to hold the Ministry of Truth aloft over Vivec City. When Sul freed her, it sent the Ministry of Truth crashing into Vivec City, killing Ilzheven and throwing Sul and Vuhon into Oblivion. Vuhon also revealed that he had an ally inside the Imperial Palace, the person that was trying to have Attrebus killed. He said he'd need the Imperial City, specifically the White Gold Tower, and offered Attrebus the chance to convince his father to back down. Through his close relationship with Oblivion, Sul shattered Vuhon's glass world by summoning a monstrous daedra. While Vuhon was distracted, Attrebus tried to attack from behind, but was discovered by Vuhon and trapped once more. At the last moment, Sul sprang to the prince's side and said "Not now," before laying a hand on his shoulder and pulling them both into another part of Oblivion. The book ends with Glim and Annaïg back on Umbriel, defeated. They spent a few hours together before saying their goodbyes, and Annaïg headed back to the kitchen. She promised Glim that, while all they could do was continue to move forward, eventually they would be free. She then resolved to become stronger and more ambitious in order to survive.

Tarzan the Invincible

fantasy

Tarzan, his monkey friend Nkima, and Chief Muviro and his faithful Waziri warriors prevent Soviet communists from looting the lost city of Opar. The story also prominently features Tarzan's lion ally Jad-bal-ja. This book marks the last appearance of Opar and La in the Tarzan series, aside from the juvenile piece Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion (1936), which was published later but is chronologically earlier.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

fantasy

Harry Potter is spending another summer with his dreadful Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. when a pair of Dementors stage an unexpected attack on Harry and his cousin Dudley. After he uses magic to defend himself and Dudley, he is temporarily expelled from Hogwarts for using magic outside of the school, despite being legally allowed to do in self-defence, before it is rescinded. A few days afterwards, Harry is visited by a group of wizards and Mad-Eye Moody and is whisked off to Number 12, Grimmauld Place, London, the home of Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. As Harry learns from his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger The Order is a group of witches and wizards, led by Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, dedicated to fighting the evil Lord Voldemort and his followers. The Order is forced to operate in secrecy, outside of the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic, which is headed by the dense and corrupt Cornelius Fudge, who refuses to believe that Lord Voldemort has returned. In addition, Harry learns that he and Dumbledore have been made victims of a ministry smear campaign aimed at discrediting them and their beliefs about Voldemort. Because of his use of magic, Harry's fate is to be determined at a discipliniary hearing at the Ministry of Magic, which turns out to be an apparent show trial. With Dumbledore's help, Harry is cleared by the Wizengamot and permitted to return to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Reunited with his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry returns to Hogwarts and learns that Dolores Umbridge, an employee of Fudge, will be his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. The Sorting Hat, which traditionally sorts all new students into one of four houses, cautions the students against becoming too internally divided. Meanwhile, due to the smear campaign against him, Harry is the subject of unwanted gossip from the student body at large, and a number of people turn against him. Professor Umbridge and Harry soon clash, as she, like Fudge, refuses to believe that Voldemort has returned and punishes Harry when he points out Voldemort's return by forcing him to write lines with a special quill that carves "I must not tell lies" into the back of his hand. Umbridge refuses to teach her students how to perform defensive spells, and before long, Fudge appoints her High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, giving her the authority to inspect all faculty members and evaluate their skills. In desperation, Harry, Hermione, and Ron form their own Defense Against the Dark Arts group, also known as the D.A., or Dumbledore's Army. Twenty-five other students sign up, including several of Harry's friends as well as the eccentric Luna Lovegood, and they meet as often as possible to learn and practice Defense spells, and learn well from Harry. One night, Harry has a vision where he inhabits the body of a large snake, and attacks Ron's father. Harry wakes up horrified, and Professor McGonagall takes him to Dumbledore immediately. Dumbledore uses the portraits on the walls of his office to raise an alert, and Mr. Weasley is promptly rescued by two members of the Order. The Weasley family, accompanied by Harry and the Order, visit Arthur Weasley in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Afterwards, Dumbledore demands that Harry take Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape, for the purpose of protecting his mind against further invasions by Lord Voldemort. During the lessons, Harry learns that a corridor he has been repeatedly visiting in his dreams is part of the Department of Mysteries. Harry is unsuccessful at Occlumency because he has such difficulty clearing his mind of all thoughts, making it difficult for him to focus on closing his mind off to all outside influence, in addition to wanting to find out what they mean. Meanwhile, his scar (from the attack in which Voldemort killed Harry's parents) burns horribly every time Voldemort experiences a powerful emotion. The D.A. continues to meet regularly, and Harry's peers show great improvement until they are caught by Umbridge. Dumbledore takes full responsibility for the group and resigns as Headmaster, and Umbridge takes over his position. Shortly afterwards, Harry ends up viewing a memory of Snape's, showing him being bullied by Harry's father James and Sirius, back in their schooldays. Harry wishes desperately to contact his godfather to talk about his father, but Umbridge has been inspecting all owl posts and patrolling the fires of Hogwarts, preventing communication via the Floo Network. Ron's brothers, Fred and George Weasley agree to distract Umbridge so that Harry can use her fireplace to talk to Sirius, who clears up Harry's doubts about his father. Immediately afterwards, they leave Hogwarts, moving to London where they plan to open a joke shop in the wizarding town of Diagon Alley using the money Harry won the previous year in the Triwizard Tournament. The students begin taking their O.W.L. exams, and Harry has another vision, this time about Sirius being held captive and tortured by Voldemort. Horrified, Harry becomes determined to save him. Hermione warns Harry that Voldemort may be deliberately trying to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries, but Harry is too concerned about Sirius to pay heed. Harry sneaks into Umbridge's office, and, using her fireplace, transports himself to 12, Grimmauld Place to look for Sirius. Kreacher, the House of Black's house elf, tells Harry that Sirius is at the Ministry of Magic. Harry returns to Hogwarts when he is pulled back through the fire by Umbridge to find that he and his friends have been caught in Umbridge's office. Ron, Luna, Ginny, and Neville, who tried to distract Umbridge so that Harry could use her fireplace, have all been seized by Slytherins and gagged. Hermione and Harry convince Umbridge to follow them into the forest, where they claim to be hiding a weapon for Dumbledore which they had just finished and wanted to tell him about. Once in the forest, Umbridge provokes the resident herd of centaurs, and is taken into the forest by them. Harry and his friends use the school's thestrals, winged skeletal horses to fly to the Ministry. Once they arrive, Harry cannot find Sirius and realises that Hermione was right. Harry also sees that one of the glass spheres has his name on it, as well as Voldemort's. Harry grabs the sphere, and Death Eaters led by Lucius Malfoy surround to attack, demanding that Harry hand over the prophecy. Employing all of their Defence skills, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville have moderate success fighting the Death Eaters, but they are ultimately helped enormously by the arrival of several members of the Order, including Dumbledore. In the midst of the fight, Harry drops the glass sphere and it shatters. Sirius is killed by his own cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange, when she blasts him through the veil. Harry tries to avenge his godfather and follows Bellatrix, but is met by Voldemort at the fountain. Dumbledore appears shortly after Voldemort and the two engage in an intense duel. Voldemort fights Dumbledore to stalemate, then possesses Harry in an attempt to get Dumbledore to sacrifice Harry in the hope of killing him. Voldemort and Lestrange escape, just as Fudge appears at the Ministry, finally faced with incontrovertible evidence that the Dark Lord has returned. Dumbledore sends Harry back to school, where, after Harry has a breakdown, screaming that "he's had enough" of all the pain and anguish and death and destruction, he explains that the sphere was a prophecy which stated that Harry has a power that Voldemort will never know: the power of love, given to him by his mother's sacrifice fifteen years earlier. The prophecy goes on to claim that neither Harry nor Voldemort can live while the other survives. Dumbledore takes this opportunity to tell Harry why he must spend his summers with the Dursleys in Little Whinging: because Harry's mother died to save him, he is blessed with her love, a blessing that can be sealed only by blood. Harry's Aunt Petunia, his mother's sister, makes that bond complete by taking Harry into her home. As long as he still calls Little Whinging home, Harry is safe. At the end of the year, the Order warn the Dursleys they will have to answer to them should they mistreat Harry, who returns to them for the summer.

Deryni Checkmate

fantasy

Deryni Checkmate takes places in March 1121, four months after the coronation of fourteen-year old King Kelson Haldane. The novel opens with the rabidly anti-Deryni leader of the Holy Church, Archbishop Edmund Loris, signing a letter that demands that the Deryni Duke of Corwyn, Alaric Morgan, recant his magical powers and submit to a life of penance. If he fails to do so, Loris threatens to excommunicate Morgan and place his entire duchy under interdict. Additionally, Morgan's cousin, Monsignor Duncan McLain, is suspended and summoned to an ecclesiastical trial to answer for his part in the events surrounding Kelson's coronation. After being warned of the threat, Kelson sends Duncan to warn Morgan of the upcoming trouble, fearing that Duncan's hidden Deryni heritage may be revealed by a trial. Duncan travels to Morgan's capital city of Coroth, where he informs his cousin of Loris' threat. In addition to the ecclesiastical threat, Morgan's duchy is being ravaged by an anti-Deryni fanatic named Warin de Grey, and the neighboring kingdom of Torenth is preparing to launch an invasion of Gwynedd. Fearing that an internal Gwyneddan conflict will weaken the kingdom prior to fighting an external enemy, Morgan and Duncan eventually decide to travel to the city of Dhassa and personally appeal to the Curia of Bishops. However, en route to Dhassa, Morgan is drugged and captured by Warin, who intends to burn the Deryni duke as a heretic. Duncan manages to rescue his cousin, but is forced to reveal his Deryni powers to ensure their escape. When the Curia learns of the cousins' actions, the two are soon excommunicated. Morgan and Duncan realize that appealing to the Curia is no longer an option, so they set out to meet with Kelson. Loris attempts to place Corwyn under Interdict, but a group of bishops refuses to participate in an action that would punish an entire duchy for the actions of its duke. Loris rages against the rebels, but he and his supporters are thrown out of Dhassa, effectively splitting the Curia. Kelson has traveled to the city of Culdi to attend the wedding of Morgan's sister, Bronwyn, and Duncan's half-brother, Kevin. Unknown to anyone, a jealous architect named Rimmell has fallen in love with Bronwyn and seeks to win her affections through the use of a love charm he acquires from an old witch woman. However, Rimmell's plan backfires horribly, and the charm kills both Bronwyn and Kevin. By the time Morgan and Duncan arrive in Culdi, Rimmell has been executed for his crime. Though Morgan is crushed with grief over the death of his sister, Kelson reminds him that he must still see to his duties. Facing an internal ecclesiastical schism, rebel fanatics ravaging his lands, and an imminent invasion from Torenth, Kelson cannot allow Morgan to wallow in his grief. Morgan agrees, and returns to his duties in service to the throne of Gwynedd.

The Tenth City

fantasy

Alexa goes back to Bridewell to rescue her friend Yipes with Warvold, Armon,Odessa, Murphy, and many others. After the death of Thomas Warvold, Alexa learns that Catherine and Thomas were her parents and her foster parents are Catherine's sister Laura and her husband James Daley. Along this sad, adventurous but still amusing book,Alexa learns to trust in herself and in Elyon.

Blart II: The Boy Who was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both

fantasy

Blart, after the imprisonment of Zoltab, is living the good life on his own pig farm. But a wily merchant named Uther has conned him out of everything he owns and his freedom by a game of cards called "Muggins". To play Muggins, the dealer simply picks two cards from the deck, hands one to the non-dealer and keeps one himself. Each player turns over their cards. If the cards were the same, say, a king and a king, then the dealer wins. If the cards are different, say, a three and a five, then the non-dealer wins. Even Blart has grasped it that the chances of the non-dealer winning is drastically in his favour and resolves to play the game with Uther to make money. However, no sooner than Blart bets stakes in the game of Muggins than Uther begins to win every round. But then quite out of the blue, Capablanca arrives to tell him that Blart and the other questors are wanted, dead or alive - or both. They are wanted because it is believed that they are minions of Zoltab, even though it was them that imprisoned him. So Blart, Capablanca and Uther (who must help them as he is wanted for associating with Blart) must find and warn the other questors. After gathering the original company (with the exception of the deceased dwarf Tungsten) they must travel to where Capablanca has imprisoned Zoltab, so as to prove their innocence. However, Capablanca has difficulty remembering where he has imprisoned the last lord. As soon ddakjfdioasdjfoasdfjs it:Blart 2

Conan the Outcast

fantasy

The King of Sark calls in his High Priest Khumanos to talk about the drought situation. After the ritual sacrifice of many high priests, Anaximander decides that a larger offering to the god Voltantha is needed. He directs Khumanos to sacrifice Qjara, a more prosperous city to the north. To do this correctly, Khumanos seeks out Solon in the desert, to which he expresses doubts about the mission. Solon sees Khumanos' compassion as a weakness and shows him the Sword of Onothimanos, which is just a rusted hilt. Khumanos becomes emotionless and devoted to the mission. So much so that he kills Solon because he outlived his usefulness. Conan is on the outskirts of Qjara awaiting a caravan to Shadizar. He is invited into the carvan sector of the city by some local children. He settles down in a bar and meets Afriandra in disguise. She proves her precognitive ability by correctly predicting the death of a nearby patron. When Zaius comes to the bar looking for her, Conan provides a distraction by taunting him. Zaius says he is not worth the effort. Conan begins a romance with Afrianda, which offends Zaius. The two men have a quick fistfight which Conan is winning, which Afrianda implores him to stop. Conan demands a formal duel which Zaius rejects on the basis of Conan not being a citizen. After Conan defends Qjara's gates from a nomad attack, he becomes an honorary citizen and uses the opportunity to challenge Zaius to ritual combat. Zaius accepts. Meanwhile, King Anaximander begins a diplomatic mission to Qjara. He witnesses proof of what he thinks of as Qjara's debauchery and asks the king and queen for permission to set up a temple to Voltantha in the city. Qjara's royalty goes one better, proposing a "marriage" between the goddess Saditha and Voltantha. The deal is done, and Khumanos begins his work. Khumanos bids slaves to mine three veins of glowing green rock from a Sarkian mountain. Extended exposure to this rock causes sores and cancer and even death. Keeping the rocks of the three veins separate, the slaves refine it into three separate statues. These three statues are hoisted onto carts and sent by three different routes to Qjara, avoiding populated areas and going through the wastelands. Despite the heat and hard labor, Khumanos insists the carts be driven by human labor with limited breaks. In Qjara, Conan prepares for his duel. Zaius preens and postures for the crowd, angering Conan. When the duel begins, Zaius' first stroke cuts off his own head. Not recognizing this as a ritual suicide, Conan begins ridiculing Zaius for backing away from the fight. This angers the royalty and forces them to cast him out of the city.

Strata

fantasy

Kin Arad is a human planetary engineer working for the Company, a human organisation that "builds" habitable planets with techniques and equipment salvaged from the Spindle Kings, an extinct alien race, excelling in terraforming. The expressed aim of the Company's planet building is to create branches of humanity diverse enough to ensure the whole species' survival for eternity, since the Earth's population in the past has been decimated due to the lethal Mindquakes, epidemic mass deaths caused by too much homogeneity among the populace. All planets built by the Company are carefully crafted with artificial strata containing false fossils, indistinguishable from the real thing. On occasion, however, mischievous Company employees will attempt to place anomalous objects in the strata, like running shoes or other out-of-place-artefacts as practical jokes, hoping to cause confusion among future archaeologists when the planets' beginnings have been long forgotten. The Company does not allow this however, and secretly monitors the generated strata in order to detect this, fearing such actions may cause the collapse of entire civilizations when the artefacts are eventually unearthed. Kin and two aliens, the four-armed frog-like, paranoid and muscular Kung Marco and Silver, a bear-like Shand, historian and linguist by profession, are recruited by the mysterious Jago Jalo for an expedition. Jalo, a human who more than a thousand years ago embarked on a relativistic journey has made a stunning discovery - a flat Earth. However, when the team rendezvous on the Kung homeworld, the violent Jalo unexpectedly has an heart-attack and dies. Shocked by the large amounts of weapons on-board Jalo's spaceship, Kin has misgivings about the expedition, but Silver and Marco see the possibility of reaping great technological rewards and launch the vessel. When the expedition finally arrives at Jalo's pre-programmed coordinates, they find a flattened version of the mediaeval Eastern hemisphere of Earth, clearly artificial. It rotates around its hub inside a gigantic hollow sphere with tiny "stars" affixed to the interior, complete with a small sun, moon and fake planets revolving around it. After their ship is hit by one of the orbiting "planets", Kin, Marco and Silver are forced to abandon ship and land on the flat Earth with the help of their lift-belt equipped suits. A return from the flat Earth now seems impossible, unless they are able to find its mysterious builders, so they embark on a journey to a structure they have spotted at the hub of the Disc, the only thing which does not match geographically with the Earth they know. En route, they encounter the superstitious Medieval inhabitants of the Disc, who believe the end of the world is near, due to increasingly chaotic climate (caused by the Disc's machinery breaking down), the recent disappearance of one of their planets and the general devastation caused by the ship's crash. They also discover a number of other differences. What Kin Arad knows as Reme is called Rome on the Disc, and there is a strange Christos cult that is completely unfamiliar to Kin Arad. Also, Venus is conspicuously lacking its giant (lunar-sized) moon Adonis, which dominates the sunset sky on the Earth Kin knows, and led humanity to a heliocentric world view early on. Since only the Eastern hemisphere of Earth is represented, the continent of America is completely missing; the travellers rescue a party of Vikings in the process of searching for Vinland, when their ship is about to sail over the edge of the world. In addition, there are real "magical" creatures and objects on the Disc, demons and magic purses and flying carpets - all of them, the travellers realise, highly advanced and sophisticated technological constructs like the Disc itself. Indeed, the world itself is an extremely old and sophisticated automated system. At the very end of the story, Kin comes to suspect that the builders of the flat world in fact constructed the universe as a whole, with the evidence of previous races being hoaxes and the flat world being an inside joke, analogous to the false strata Kin and the Company themselves manufacture, and the occasional hoaxes put in these strata by rebellious employees. Kin and the others eventually reach the hub and Kin makes contact with the Disc's controlling systems. She is told that, despite advanced robotic maintenance, sheer entropy build-up threatens the Disc's further existence. The machines offer their advanced technology, in exchange for Kin's construction of a real replacement Earth for the flat planet's inhabitants. Kin agrees; the implication being that the world she will build is in fact our own Earth. Kin is excited about the massive task at hand; just like Ringworld's Louis Wu, whom she parallels, she is over two hundred years old, and thus constantly under the threat of growing tired of life.

The Starlight Barking

fantasy

A day of enchantments for the Dalmatians of the first book begins when the Dalmatians wake up and find all the humans and other animals in an unnaturally deep sleep. They hear the barking of Cadpig, carrying all the way from London, where she has become the Prime Minister's pet. She informs them reports from all over the country reveal the same phenomenon, and summons delegate dogs to London. They travel to London by "swooshing", described as gliding just off the ground. Pongo and Missus decide to investigate Cruella de Vil to see if she's behind the mysterious events. Joined by Tommy and the white Persian cat, who are "honorary dogs", and a few dogs, they arrive at her house, where the doors magically open for them. However, they find her fast asleep like all the other humans on earth. The dogs then travel to Trafalgar Square where they are addressed from the top of Nelson's Column by Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, an extraterrestrial dog. Every dog perceives him as a dog of his own breed. Sirius invites them all to travel back to his home where they will be safe from the dangers of nuclear war on Earth, not to mention the whims and potential abuse of humans. Some dogs are for this, some against, but in the end all the dogs agree that Pongo, known for his braininess and heroism, should make the decision. Pongo joins in a conference with Cadpig and her "cabinet" discussing whether to go with Sirius or not. Then three skinny, mixed-breed strays arrive and ask to be heard. Pongo is sure that they will want to go with Sirius, but they want to stay on earth and someday have owners of their own. Pongo tells Sirius the dogs cannot abandon their humans and the Dog Star sadly accepts the decision. Before he leaves, he grants every dog the power to reach his home before the humans wake up. All the stray dogs take the opportunity to go to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Moominsummer Madness

fantasy

A nearby volcano causes a massive wave to flood Moominvalley. While escaping the flood the Moomin family and their friends find a building floating past, and take up residence there. They believe it is a deserted house until they realise someone else lives there, Emma, who explains that it is not a house but a theatre. The moomins start to understand about the scenery, props, and costumes they have found. The theatre drifts aground and Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden decide to go and sleep in a tree. When they wake next morning the theatre has floated away again and they are alone. Meanwhile Little My accidentally falls overboard, and by some strange coincidence is rescued by Moomintroll's adventurous friend Snufkin who is setting off to seek revenge on a grumpy Park Keeper. He tears down all the 'Do not walk on the grass' notices, fills the lawns with electric Hattifatteners and sets free twenty-four small woodies who immediately adopt him as their father. The coincidences continue as Moonmintroll and the Snork Maiden meet Emma's deceased husbands niece, the Fillyjonk, and all three get arrested burning the signs that Snufkin tore up. Meanwhile in the theatre, Emma helps Moominpappa write a play and the family decide to stage it. The woodies find a playbill for the play and cajole Snufkin into taking them to the theatre. The Hemulen who has arrested Fillyjonk, Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden also finds a playbill and leaves his cousin to guard the prisoners while he heads off to see the play. The cousin is persuaded of their innocence and lets them out to go to the play too, where everyone is reunited and ends up on stage, the play itself collapsing into a big reunion party. When the floods recede everyone gets to go home.

Hunting Party

fantasy

The plot and narrative center on one Heris Serrano, a strong competent female protagonist. She has recently left the Regular Space Service that guards the Familias Regnant rather than face a court-martial for saving the lives of her troops by deliberately disobeying the orders of her bloodthirsty superior, Admiral Lepescu, and capturing her objectives in a way other than what he specified. Cashiered to civilian life, she must make a living as a captain. Her employment agency finds her a job as captain of the private yacht Sweet Delight for a rich Family member, Lady Cecelia. The Sweet Delight''s previous captain, the sinister Captain Olin, had incurred Cecelia's wrath by failing to promptly leave the capital (where Cecelia had been to attend the Grand Council of the Familias) so she could arrive on Sirialis, Lord Thornbuckle's private estate-planet, in time for the beginning of the fox hunting season; this delay saddled her with some obstreperous relatives who are in disgrace and are sent aboard her yacht as being a convenient mobile exile. Heris discovers to her dismay that the same agency that had recommended her to Cecelia had also foisted an unrelieved stream of incompetent, regenerate, and outright criminal personnel on her ship, and that her new command was not merely overly luxurious and inefficient, it was an outright deathtrap. This point is driven home when Heris begins tracking down anomalies in the environmental systems and decides to inspect portions herself. The two environmental technicians she orders to accompany her in protective suits rush down to reach the scrubber before Heris. Heris's worse fears are realized when the two technicians blunder and unleash a cloud of deadly hydrogen sulfide; one dies, and the other is badly injured. On subsequent investigation, the life-support systems are in imminent danger of collapse. Heris orders an emergency detour to a deep-space shipyard for repairs. While in the shipyard, contraband data is discovered secreted in the scrubbers. Apparently Captain Olin, the dead Iklind, and presumably some of the others were using Cecelia's yacht to smuggle various goods for unknown parties. Cecelia and Heris agree to a bet: if the repairs were completed on schedule, Heris would tutor Cecelia on the inner workings of her ship. If not, then Cecelia would teach Heris equestrianism using her personal mechanical horse. In part because of the smuggling, Heris loses, but Cecelia does not hold her to it because of the legal interference, and insists that both sides pay up. The two discover a certain fondness for each other's pet subject, and slowly become fast friends. Ron gets cross-wise of Heris when he calls her "disgusting" for putting him and his companions in what he considers to be inferior housing during their stay at the shipyard, and compounds the offense when he intrudes on the bridge (intending to apologize) during a tricky series of FTL jumps. The final straw occurs during an emergency drill; Ron and Odious George had as a prank repainted various cylinders used in drills and tampered with equipment to confuse and humiliate the captain. Had the computer-generated drill been a little different, the cylinders would have formed a home-made bomb. Heris, with Cecelia's permission, locks Ron in his quarters, and through dexterous manipulation of the computerized fixtures and equipment tames Ron and slowly leads him to realize the errors of his ways; thereafter she begins to remedy his lax and deficient education. He is released when he has learned sufficient common sense. Ron's newfound sensibility begins wearing off when the Sweet Delight reaches Sirialis and the others (Cecelia, Heris, Brun, Raffaele, and George) all begin enjoying the fox hunting while Ron is positively miserable and unskilled at riding to the hounds. George suggests that they take a secret jaunt to one of the vacation islands to simply get away from it all and annoy their relations by disappearing for a little while. Their escape goes well, until they attempt to set down at the Bandoo complex of lodges and facilities, to refuel their flitter. Their authority is denied by the systems there, and while circling the field, their flitter is shot down. Struggling to the island, they are greeted by former members of Heris's crew, who apparently are the designated prey of a manhunt organized by the same Admiral Lepescu who had ruined Heris's crew. They had thought that the flitter was carrying some hunters, and so used their best weapon. They split the youngsters up into two groups, Raffaele with Brun and George with Ron, reasoning that divided there would be a better chance that at least one of them would survive long enough to be rescued. The first night, Raffaele and Brun do well, acquiring a hunter's gear when that hunter killed the long-time survivor Petris had sent to look after them; the hunter overconfidently fell to the blade of his not-yet-dead victim. The next day, they find a well-hidden cave, and hunker down in it. Ron and George do not do so swell. They improve the hours of the first night constructing a shoddy trap for hunters, and the next day Ron contracts a fever of some sort. George goes to get some water for Ron, but makes the mistake of drinking some before he notices the eerie silence of the creek: it had been poisoned by the hunters, who have begun to fear that the youngsters' absence would be noticed and have ceased to hunt fair. Ron feverishly attempts to drag George's body to safety, but George is captured by the hunters and is taken to Bandon lodge (while Ron manages to escape). At the lodge, George talks his two guards into betraying Lepescu and into letting him send a message to Lord Thornbuckle and his militia. The message reaches Heris and Cecelia who have already organized a militia expedition - they had grown suspicious of their absence and various unauthorized shuttle flights down to the islands. When they storm Bandon, a traitor in the militia kills the two guards and nearly kills George. All the hunters and victims were on the other island. Lepescu has realized that the jig was up, and begins methodically killing all the hunters and prey. His intent is to eliminate any witnesses and escape Sirialis. Ron finds the girls just before one of the surviving hunters does. They get the drop on him and discover that the crown prince Gerel is part of Lepescu's cabal. They all set out to escape the island, and are ambushed by Lepescu, who offers the prince a choice: either kill his friends, allowing Lepescu to blackmail the prince, or he will die with them. His threat is backed up by a gas grenade with a dead man's switch. Heris and Cecelia have been following the prince's tracks; while delayed by killing the traitorous militia member, they come upon Lepescu in time for Heris to shoot him in the head and end his threat. In the aftermath, Lepescu's cabal is dismantled. George recovers, and reunites with Brun and Ron, whose experience on the island have made them mature. Heris's former crew (the survivors, at least), decide not to return to the Fleet that betrayed them, and join the Sweet Delight, largely replacing the feckless former crew. The prince's participation is hushed up and he is confined aboard Cecelia's yacht until he returns to Rockhouse Major, there to answer to his father.

The Dragon Knight

fantasy

Jim and Angie are adjusting to their new life within this parallel dimensional version of 14-century medieval England or as well as any 20-century persons might do in a 14-century medieval environment. Jim, the now Sir James, Baron of Malencontri et Riveroak is making an attempt at being a good English Lord, however, fate is conspiring against him and will set him on an adventure to recover the Prince of England who is being held captive in France. Little does Jim know that he'll be going up against the interests of the "Dark Powers" who are already at work to thwart Jim's mission. This will cumulate with Jim squaring off against the evil and powerful sorcerer Malvinne.

A Midsummer Tempest

fantasy

Prince Rupert is taken by the Roundheads; held captive at a country house, he falls in love with his captor's niece, Jennifer. One of his troopers, Will Fairweather, followed him to the house where he was held captive; with the help of Jennifer, Will brings him to Oberon and Titania, who offer magical aid. Rupert and Jennifer exchange magic rings that will aid them as long as they are true to each other. Rupert sets out with Will to find the books that Prospero sank, in order to aid King Charles. Rupert, fleeing Roundheads, finds refuge in a magical inn, The Old Phoenix, which proves to be a nexus between parallel worlds. Inside the tavern, he meets Valeria Matuchek, who is from an alternate history twentieth-century America. (Originally, the character had been a child in Anderson's Operation Chaos and a teenager in its sequel, Operation Luna, but is now an adult.) Holger Carlsen is another guest, born in a world where the Matter of France is history, and later trapped in "our own" twentieth-century America (the hero of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions). Valeria explains what will happen in the English Civil War in "our" timeline, including the king's execution, strengthening Rupert's determination to change events here. He finds a Spanish ship that will transport him; it is carrying an ambassador and his wife. Jennifer's Puritan uncle discovers her on her return, when she resolves to use the ring to find Rupert. She is brought, captive, to a port, where the ring enables her to steal a boat and set sail. The ambassador's wife uses a magic potion to seduce Rupert, and the rings fail. Rupert cannot find his way to the island, and Jennifer is stranded at sea. Despairing, Rupert takes to the library at Milan to try to work out where to find the island and books. Jennifer's plight becomes desperate from thirst, but Ariel (from The Tempest) finds her and brings her to the island. Rupert works out the location, and Jennifer and he are reconciled. They retrieve the books and magically bear them back to England. Charles I has taken up a position near Glastonbury Tor for reasons he does not understand. Rupert attempts the magic; Will Fairweather is possessed by a spirit of England and stirs up the magic of the land. The Roundheads are defeated, and Charles I wins the English Civil War. At the Old Phoenix, Valeria believes that even if "romantic reactionaries" like Charles I won the English Civil War here, there is still the prospect of technological advance in North America. However, the fairies believed differently—they supported the Cavalier cause to delay the disenchantment of this world. Rupert and Jennifer return the rings to Oberon and Titania, and retire to a peaceful married life.

The Stones Are Hatching

fantasy

Phelim awakes one morning while his sister, Prudence, is away. He soon learns that he is the inheritor of a responsibility to stop the apocalyptic Stoor Worm from waking. In order to do this, he must (overcoming a strong reluctance) rally the three symbolic figures of Maiden, Fool, and Horse, elude the Stoor Worm's monstrous children, and reach the Worm at her resting place. At this he succeeds, encountering various dangers and losing his companions en route. At the climax, Phelim kills the Stoor Worm outright and returns home, thereafter making his sister ride on a horse and making it go to the farthest sea. This hypocrisy (contrasted with his name, which is translated as "Ever-Good"), strips him of his own symbolic significance. At the end, he seeks counsel of his father.

Death's Deputy

fantasy

The novel concerns a man who is unnaturally accident-prone.

Iron Fist

fantasy

After Wraith Squadron's first successful mission against Admiral Trigit, the squadron is transferred back to Coruscant. During a visit to one of the many bars on the planet, an anonymous cyborg, similar to Phanan, attacks them and starts a large bar fight. New Republic Military Police officers quickly arrive and break up the fight and arrest the members of Wraith Squadron. While being marched off, Face Loran hints that this may in fact be a trap, and the other members escape, subduing their captors. At the debriefing, it is revealed that the New Republic MPs were in fact covert agents working for Warlord Zsinj. For security reasons, Wraith Squadron is to be confined to the base. They also receive replacements pilots: Castin Donn, Dia Passik, and Shalla Nelprin. While at the base their new mission is to predict what Zsinj may be planning next. Meanwhile, Phanan recognizes that one of the officers who had debriefed them was Atton Repness, the corrupt officer who blackmailed Tyria into keeping quiet about his black market operation. Phanan and Kell devise an elaborate plot to bait Repness and expose him. Phanan and Face recruit Lara Notsil, who is actually Gara Petothel in disguise and offer her a spot in Wraith Squadron if she agrees to help bring down Repness. After submitting their predictions of Zsinj's plans, Wraith Squadron is sent to the Halmad system, an Imperial world with a large amount of resources. Their mission is to pose as a band of pirates and stage raids in an attempt to catch Zsinj's attention. They manage to sneak into an Imperial base and steal six TIE Interceptors. As the "Hawk-bats", the Wraiths begin staging pirate raids on freighters and ground targets. Meanwhile, at the pilot academy, Lara Notsil continues trying to bait Repness and succeeds. Using her Imperial Intelligence skills, she manages to hack into Repness' computer and anonymously sends the data to New Republic Intelligence. She then publicly rejects Repenss' offer to join his operation. Repness attempts to keep her quiet, but fails and is arrested. Lara is given Repness' old X-Wing and transferred to Wraith Squadron just in time to assist with a joint mission with Rogue Squadron. During the mission, Lara has the opportunity to shoot Wedge's X-Wing in the back, but can't bring herself to do it. After the mission, Wraith Squadron resumes the guise of the Hawk-bats and prepares for a massive raid on two Imperial airbases. Face begins to realize Phanan's deep depression, and Lara is covertly contacted by Warlord Zsinj, disguised as a job offer from the real Lara's brother. Lara is forced her to decide whether to join the New Republic or the Empire. Myn Donos passes by and provides some comfort, and offers to accompany Lara to see her "brother", fearing that it may be a trap set by Zsinj. The Wraiths start their massive raid, but are quickly foiled when Zsinj ambushes them. Phanan's fighter is shot down and Face tries to rescue him. Unfortunately, Phanan is mortally wounded from the crash and dies. Shocked at the death of his best friend, Face returns to the Wraiths, where he finds out that Zsinj has offered the Hawk-bats to join his fleet. Meanwhile, Lara and Donos arrive at the rendezvous. Lara meets her "brother", along with an Imperial Intelligence agent. Lara refuses to join them, and before they can do anything, Donos shoots both of them dead with his sniper rifle. Lara then lies to Donos by saying that both men tried to abduct her. Taking up Zsinj's offer, Face, Kell, and Dia go to meet Zsinj and obtain some intelligence on him. Castin smuggles himself on board their shuttle, believing that his tracer program will help destroy Zsinj. Unfortunately, Castin is killed trying to implant the program. Zsinj questions Face about the issue, and Dia is forced to "kill" Castin in order to prove their loyalty. (Zsinj staged it so that it looked as if Castin's body was still alive.) Dia suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder for her actions, but Face manages to calm her down. The romantic ties between Face and Dia begin to reveal themselves. After reviewing the data that Zsinj provided, Wedge figures out that Zsinj wants to attack Kuat and steal a new Super Star Destroyer, the Razor's Kiss. Shalla is sent as the Hawk-bat's combat specialist to "assist" Zsinj's commando force, while the rest of Wraith Squadron will pose as the Hawk-Bats, and will aid Zsinj's forces in the assault on the Kuat shipyards. Shalla manages to install Castin's tracker program into the Razor's Kiss computers, and sabotages the shield generators. A New Republic task force led by Han Solo ambushes Zsinj's forces at the rendezvous after the successful capture of the Razor's Kiss, destroying Razor's Kiss and severely damaging the Iron Fist. Face, after suffering severe injuries during the battle, returns to the Wraiths. They discover that he had removed his trademark scar. Face admits that Phanan forced him to, since his will stated that if Face did not undergo the operation, Phanan's considerable wealth would be given to Face's rival actor, Tetran Cowall.

First Amoung Sequels

fantasy

In order to save the future, undercover SpecOps investigator Thursday Next attempts to convince her son Friday to join the ChronoGuard. To complicate matters, she'll have to deal with renegade apprentices, ruthless corporations, and a sting operation from the Cheese Enforcement Agency. The title First Among Sequels was met with stiff resistance from Fforde's publishers because it had 'sequel' in the title, and it was felt that telegraphing the 'sequelness' of the book might be a bad move. It was decided, however, to capitalise on the fact that this was a series - a sort of 'Have you discovered Thursday Next yet?' approach to marketing. First Among Sequels is the first part of a new four-part Thursday Next series, which is reported to be continued with One of our Thursdays is Missing in 2011. The title is a parody of First Among Equals, which is the title of a best-selling Jeffrey Archer novel, but also comes from the English translation of the Latin phrase primus inter pares. It is traditionally used to describe the position of the British Prime Minister, since in the British Constitution the position of prime minister has no official existence, and the office holder is simply the 'most powerful' of the Queen's advisors in Cabinet.

The Wonderful Visit

fantasy

The Wonderful Visit tells how an angel spends a little more than a week in southern England. He is at first mistaken for a bird because of his dazzling polychromatic plumage, for he is "neither the Angel of religious feeling nor the Angel of popular belief," but rather "the Angel of Italian art." As a result, he is hunted and shot in the wing by an amateur ornithologist, the Rev. K. Hilyer, the vicar of Siddermoton, and then taken in and cared for at the vicarage. The creature comes from "the Land of Dreams" (also the angel's term for our world), and while "charmingly affable," is "quite ignorant of the most elementary facts of civilisation." During his brief visit he grows increasingly dismayed by what he learns about the world in general and about life in Victorian England in particular. As he grows increasingly critical of local mores, he is eventually denounced as "a Socalist." The vicar, his host, meanwhile comes under attack by fellow clerics, neighbors, and even servants for harboring a disreputable character (no one but the vicar believes he comes from another world, and people take to calling him "Mr. Angel"). The angel's one talent is his divine violin-playing, but he is discredited at a reception that Lady Hammergallow agrees to host when it is discovered that he cannot read music and confides to a sympathetic listener that he has taken an interest in the vicar's serving girl, Delia. Instead of healing, his wings begin to atrophy. The local physician, Dr. Crump, threatens to have him put in a prison or a madhouse. After the angel destroys some barbed wire on a local baronet's property, Sir John Gotch gives the vicar one week to send him away before he begins proceedings against him. The Rev. Mr. Hilyer is regretfully planning how he will take the angel to London and try to establish him there when two catastrophes abort the plan. First, the angel, who "had been breathing the poisonous air of this Struggle for Existence of ours for more than a week," beats Sir John Gotch with Gotch's own whip in a fury after the local landowner insolently orders him off his land. Distraught to think (mistakenly) that he has killed a man, he returns to the village to find the vicar's house in flames. Delia, the serving girl, has entered the burning building in an attempt to rescue the angel's violin: this extraordinary act comes as a revelation to the angel. "Then in a flash he saw it all, saw this grim little world of battle and cruelty, transfigured in a splendour that outshone the Angelic Land, suffused suddenly and insupportably glorious with the wonderful light of Love and Self-Sacrifice." The angel attempts to rescue Delia, someone seems to see "two figures with wings" flash up and vanish among the flames, and a strange music that "began and ended like the opening and shutting of a door" suggests that the angel has gone back to where he came from, accompanied by Delia. An epilogue reveals that "there is nothing beneath" the two white crosses in Siddermorton cemetery that bear the names of Thomas Angel and Delia Hardy, and that the vicar, who never recovered his aplomb after the angel's departure, died within a year of the fire.

The Black Swan

fantasy

Odile von Rothbart is a young sorceress in training under her father's tutelage. She adores and respects him, at least in part because he has taught her that women are meant to be loyal to men. Living in the gardens is the "flock;" the group of young women Rothbart has ensorceled because they were unfaithful to their husbands or fathers. They are under a curse which compels them to become swans by day and women only during moonlit hours. The most beautiful and noble of these is Princess Odette, the Queen of Swans. Odile is restless because her father seldom praises her, even though (or perhaps because) she is growing to be his equal in magic. She has never seen much of the world outside her father's estate, but she knows she would like the company of other people. She has no interest in the swans because they seem to lack her intelligence, and because Rothbart has taught her to despise them. When Odette openly defies Rothbart, challenging him to give a convincing reason for his punishment of the flock, he offers her a deal; if she can capture and hold the loyalty of a man for an entire month, the curse which keeps the flock captive will be broken. A condition of the deal is that the young man must know exactly what Odette had done (refused the engagement her father had set for her and run away with a member of the court) and still pledge his loyalty to her. Rothbart then leads the flock, plus Odile, on a long journey to Siegfried's kingdom. In the secondary plot, Queen Clothilde is a competent but ruthless woman acting as regent for Siegfried. She does not want to surrender power to her son when he turns 18; an event mere months away. She plans a birthday celebration for him at which six beautiful princesses, all prospective brides, will attend, hoping to distract him from his kingship. Clothilde secretly hopes to kill Siegfried and either take the throne in right or continue as regent for a grandchild. She is aided in her scheme by Uwe, her minstrel and former lover. Siegfried himself is a womanizer and a scoundrel, but a religious experience convinces him to change his ways. Clothilde is dismayed, since the reformed Siegfried is winning the respect of her court. Baron Rothbart pays a visit to Clothilde and requests that his own daughter be allowed to attend the festival as a potential bride. She agrees, tempted by the prospect of having a sorcerer readily at hand. The flock arrives at a small lake. Odile, who has largely been in charge of their care, is getting to know the swan maidens and feels some sympathy for them. She wants Odette to succeed because she thinks she and her father would have more freedom to travel if the swan-maidens were no longer their burden. Siegfried, sent out hunting by his mother in search of swans, encounters Odette, and it is love at first sight. His friend Benno, returning to the lake by daylight to investigate, is quickly dismissed by Odile. When both men return to the lake at night, Odette is able to allay their suspicions that she is some sort of witch. She tells Siegfried why she has been cursed, and he agrees to marry her and thus break the curse. Happily, Odile tells her father that Odette has fulfilled her part of the bargain. The next day is the day of the fête where Siegfried will choose his bride. Odette leaves the flock in the morning to find him. Rothbart and Odile also attend, Odile having little idea what to expect. Her father casts a spell on her which makes her look like Odette and controls her with more magic, keeping her from warning Siegfried. The Prince declares his desire to marry "the daughter of Baron Rothbart," which breaks the vow he made to Odette. Worst of all, Odette arrives just in time to witness this. She flees, Siegfried follows, and Odile runs after them both. Rothbart reveals that his aim the entire time has been to deliver judgment on Clothilde, since he knew she was plotting to kill her own son. He brings part of the Great Hall down on her and Uwe, who lives just long enough to reveal the plot to Benno and the court. At the lake, Rothbart taunts Siegfried and Odette, while Odile watches from concealment. At a crucial moment, she kills him with his own dagger, then rescues Odette and Siegfried, who have jumped into the lake to drown together rather than be separated. When the sun rises, the girls remain girls, indicating that Rothbart's spell has died with him. Odette marries Siegfried and gives Odile a position on her council. Odile and Benno appear to be falling in love.

The City of Dreaming Books

fantasy

Optimus Yarnspinner, or Hildegunst von Mythenmetz in the German version, is a Lindworm (dinosaur) who inherits his authorial godfather's possessions, including a perfect story written by an unknown author. An aspiring author himself, he travels to Bookholm, the city of dreaming books, in search of the unknown writer. Upon arrival, Yarnspinner falls in love with the city because of its literary appreciation. But beneath Bookholm stretch vast labyrinthine catacombs in which many valuable books lie hidden – but also dangers of unimaginable sorts: Various kinds of monstrous insects and other inconceivable horrors, the deadly Toxicotomes – books which can injure and kill anyone who touches them, blood-thirsty book hunters, and worst of all, the Shadow King. Yarnspinner is hoping this city of literature can fulfill his hunger for inspiration and help him solve the riddle of the mystery writer and his amazing story. Unfortunately the first real spark of hope gets a shower of questions when he is inexplicably warned for lurking danger and given the advice to flee while he still can. He comes into contact with a publisher in a cafe who directs him to Pfistomel Smyke. Smyke happens to control the entire book trade in Bookholm as well as much of the trade throughout Zamonia. When Yarnspinner travels to his house on 333 Darkman Street, Smyke reveals his plan to completely eradicate all forms of art in Zamonia. Then he is tricked into picking up a poisoned book and falls unconscious. He awakes in the famous catacombs of Bookholm, one of the most dangerous places in Zamonia.

Tiassa

fantasy

The book is presented in three parts, with a prelude, interludes, and an epilogue. All three larger sections and some of the smaller ones involve a silver statue of a tiassa, and the character of Khaavren, of the House of the Tiassa, but each tells a distinct story. The first section, "Tag", tells the story, in the typical Vlad Taltos as first person narrator style, of certain events early in his career as a high-ranking Jhereg. Vlad is contacted by the Viscount of Adrilhanka, who is a rogue and highwayman, to defeat a scheme by the Empire to track stolen money. The second section, "Whitecrest", is set much later, after Vlad is on the run from the Jhereg, and follows multiple characters, mainly the Countess of Whitecrest (Khaavren's wife and the Viscount's mother) and Cawti, Vlad's ex-wife. An impending Jenoine invasion is detected, but it may be a ruse to draw Vlad out. The third section, "Special Tasks" is the most recent chronologically, and is written in the voice of Paarfi, the fictional author of the Khaavren Romances. It mainly follows Khaavren himself as he investigates an attempt on Vlad's life.

The Indigo King

fantasy

After John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return from their last adventure in the Archipelago, they spend five years in the Summer Country, our world. The Caretakers form a group at Oxford, including two close friends, Hugo Dyson and Owen Barfield. Hugo has become so close a friend that John and Jack consider making him an apprentice Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and the Archipelago. Soon after they show Hugo the Geographica, he shows them a book sent to him from Charles, who is in France. The book has a mysterious foreword supposedly written by Hugo in his own blood. They decide to take a walk to take a break from all the confusion. Hugo enters a door in the wood and disappears somewhere in time. Hugo believes that he is being pranked by his companions, but eventually realizes this is not the case. John and Jack meet the Royal Animal Rescue Team, a group of badgers led by Uncas - the son of Tummeler - and his son Fred. They inform the men that fourteen years ago they were ordered to save John, Jack and Charles from an unknown event in the near future. Preparing to leave, Uncas unknowingly shuts the mysterious door, the remainder of the rescue team and the surrounding Oxford area to vanish. Noting the new desiccated land that lies before them called Albion, the group sets out to discover what has become of their world. After they escape from giants contained in a tower, the group is rescued from a Wicker Man by a man called Chaz. Resembling Charles, the two men and badgers realize that "Chaz" is not the Charles they know. Chaz is rough, scared and distrustful from his many years of surviving but the party is sure that Chaz is Charles, just from a different timeline in which Mordred, the Winter King, rules and the Archipelago is destroyed. Chaz leads the group to Bert, who gives John a skull of the deceased Jules Verne, a map, and the Serendipity Box which provides the opener with the thing he needs most. Mordred appears, courtesy of the traitorous Chaz and binds the men and badgers using their true names and departs. Uncas releases the men, who with the help of Bert, who uses a scarab brooch given to him by the Serendipity Box, creates an ocean and the Red Dragon that the companions leave on, except for Bert, who stays behind. On an island, the party discovers a time machine created by Jules Verne left for them in order to fix the problem that Hugo created, that led to the creation of Albion. The time machine runs like a projector, and the first slide is of Ancient Greece, where the companions meet two twins, Myrddyn and Madoc. They deduce that one is the Cartographer of Lost Places and the other is Mordred. In the next slide, the companions visit the Library of Alexandria and find Meridian(Myrddyn), the twin who becomes the Cartographer. They discover that the Holy Grail is being held in this library, and that Madoc, the twin who becomes Mordred, has been sleeping with her. Meridian binds Madoc and when they try to escape, Chaz unknowingly uses his fire balls and causes the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. In the third slide, the companions meet Hugo. They witness the Tournament of Champions, held to determine the next ruler of Meridian's Precinct, modern-day Britain. The three main entrants in this tournament are Merlin, who is the Cartographer, Mordred and Thorn, a young boy who is destined to become the Arthur, or High King. During the fight between Merlin and Mordred, Hugo throws a dagger at Mordred to prevent him from becoming King. Hugo disqualifies both Merlin and Mordred, letting Thorn become Arthur. However, Arthur does not command the loyalty of the people as he would if the fight continued normally. In the fourth slide, the companions fight in a civil war against Arthur, as Merlin has united with the local rulers to gain the crown. Mordred has allied with Arthur. However, Arthur tries reason with Mordred, and so Mordred kills Arthur. The companions learn that Arthur can be resurrected by the Holy Grail. They journey to Avalon, where they encounter the priestess that slept with Mordred, and bring back her daughter. They are forced to leave Chaz, who becomes the first Guardian of Avalon, or the Green Knight. The companions leave Chaz the Lance of Longinus. The daughter of the priestess, named Rose, revives Arthur, who cuts off Mordred's hand when he attempts to kill Merlin. Mordred disappears. Arthur summons the dragons, uniting the fiefdoms and ending the civil war. Merlin departs to become the Cartographer. In the fifth slide, the companions meet Geoffrey of Monmouth, and journey to the Keep of Time, where they talk with the Cartographer. He gives them a key that lets them access the top room of the Keep of Time, the future. The party emerges from the door they first entered, and are summoned to talk with Richard Burton. He tells them that he caused Hugo to travel into the past with the backing of the Imperial Cartological Society. He intended to show the Caretakers that Mordred was merely a victim of fate. He did not know about the creation of Albion when Hugo violated the contest. He also could not see Rose, addressing Hugo, Bert, John, Jack and Charles as though they were the only ones present. In a pre-World War II setting, it is hinted that Mordred has rediscovered the Lance of Longinus, and is ready to begin another assault.

Vathek

fantasy

The novel chronicles the fall from power of the Caliph Vathek (a fictionalized version of the historical Al-Wathiq), who renounces Islam and engages with his mother, Carathis, in a series of licentious and deplorable activities designed to gain him supernatural powers. At the end of the novel, instead of attaining these powers, Vathek descends into a hell ruled by the demon Eblis where he is doomed to wander endlessly and speechlessly. Vathek, the ninth Caliph of the Abassides, ascended to the throne at an early age. He is a majestic figure, terrible in anger (one glance of his flashing eye can make “the wretch on whom it was fixed instantly [fall] backwards and sometimes [expire]”), and addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. He is intensely thirsty for knowledge and often invites scholars to converse with him. If he fails to convince the scholar of his points of view, he attempts a bribe; if this does not work, he sends the scholar to prison. In order to better study astronomy, he builds an observation tower with 1,500 steps. A hideous stranger arrives in town, claiming to be a merchant from India selling precious goods. Vathek buys glowing swords with letters on them from the merchant, and invites the merchant to dinner. When the merchant does not respond to Vathek's questions, Vathek looks at him with his "evil eye," but this has no effect, so Vathek imprisons him. The next day, he discovers that the merchant has escaped and his prison guards are dead. The people begin to call Vathek crazy. His mother, Carathis, tells him that the merchant was “the one talked about in the prophecy”, and Vathek admits that he should have treated the stranger kindly. Vathek wants to decipher the messages on his new sabers, offers a reward to anyone who can help him, and punishes those who fail. After several scholars fail, one elderly man succeeds: the swords say "We were made where everything is well made; we are the least of the wonders of a place where all is wonderful and deserving, the sight of the first potentate on earth." But the next morning, the message has changed: the sword now says “Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasses his power”. The old man flees before Vathek can punish him. However, Vathek realizes that the writing on the swords really did change. Vathek then develops an insatiable thirst and often goes to a place near a high mountain to drink from one of four fountains there, kneeling at the edge of the fountain to drink. One day he hears a voice telling him to “not assimilate thyself to a dog”. It was the voice of the merchant who had sold him the swords, Giaour. Giaour cures his thirst with a potion and the two men return to Samarah. Vathek returns to immersing himself in the pleasures of the flesh, and begins to fear that Giaour, who is now popular at Court, will seduce one of his wives. Some mornings later, Carathis reads a message in the stars foretelling a great evil to befall Vathek and his vizir Morakanabad; she advises him to ask Giaour about the drugs he used in the potion. When Vathek confronts him, Giaour only laughs, so Vathek gets angry and kicks him. Giaour is transformed into a ball and Vathek compels everyone in the palace to kick it, even the resistant Carathis and Morakanabad. Then Vathek has the whole town kick the ball-shaped merchant into a remote valley. Vathek stays in the area and eventually hears Giaour's voice telling him that if he will worship Giaour and the jinns of the earth, and renounce the teachings of Islam, he will bring Vathek to “the palace of the subterrain fire” (22) where Soliman Ben Daoud controls the talismans that rule over the world. Vathek agrees, and proceeds with the ritual that Giaour demands: to sacrifice fifty of the city's children. In return, Vathek will receive a key of great power. Vathek holds a "competition" among the children of the nobles of Samarah, declaring that the winners will receive "endless favors." As the children approach Vathek for the competition, he throws them inside an ebony portal to be sacrificed. Once this is finished, Giaour makes the portal disappear. The Samaran citizens see Vathek alone and accuse him of having sacrificed their children to Giaour, and form a mob to kill Vathek. Carathis pleads with Morakanabad to help save Vathek's life; the vizier complies, and calms the crowd down. Vathek wonders when his reward will come, and Carathis says that he must fulfill his end of the pact and sacrifice to the Jinn of the earth. Carathis helps him prepare the sacrifice: she and her son climb to the top of the tower and mix oils to create an explosion of light. The people, presuming that the tower is on fire, rush up the stairs to save Vathek from being burnt to death. Instead, Carathis sacrifices them to the Jinn. Carathis performs another ritual and learns that for Vathek to claim his reward, he must go to Istakhar. Vathek goes away with his wives and servants, leaving the city in the care of Morakanabad and Carathis. A week after he leaves, his caravan is attacked by carnivorous animals. The soldiers panic and accidentally set the area on fire; Vathek and his wives must flee. Still, they continue on their way. They reach steep mountains where the Islamic dwarves dwell. They invite Vathek to rest with them, possibly in the hopes of converting him back to Islam. Vathek sees a message his mother left for him: “Beware of old doctors and their puny messengers of but one cubit high: distrust their pious frauds; and, instead of eating their melons, impale on a spit the bearers of them. Should thou be so fool as to visit them, the portal to the subterranean place will shut in thy face” (53). Vathek becomes angry and claims that he has followed Giaour’s instructions long enough. He stays with the dwarves, meets their Emir, named Fakreddin, and Emir's beautiful daughter Nouronihar. Vathek wants to marry her, but she is already promised to her effeminate cousin Gulchenrouz, whom she loves and who loves her back. Vathek thinks she should be with a "real" man and arranges for Babalouk to kidnap Gulchenrouz. The Emir, finding of the attempted seduction, asks Vathek to kill him, as he has seen “the prophet’s vice-regent violate the laws of hospitality." But Nouronihar prevents Vathek from killing her father and Gulchenrouz escapes. The Emir and his servants then meet and they develop a plan to safeguard Nouronihar and Gulchenrouz, by drugging them and place them in a hidden valley by a lake where Vathek cannot find them. The plan succeeds temporarily - the two are drugged, brought to the valley, and convinced on their awakening that they have died and are in purgatory. Nouronihar, however, grows curious about her surroundings and ascends to find out what lies beyond the valley. There she meets Vathek, who is mourning for her supposed death. Both realize that her 'death' has been a sham. Vathek then orders Nouronihar to marry him, she abandons Gulchenrouz, and the Emir abandons hope. Meanwhile, in Samarah, Carathis can discover no news of her son from reading the stars. She conjures the spirits of a graveyard to perform a spell that makes her appear in front of Vathek, who is bathing with Nouronihar. She tells him he is wasting his time with Nouronihar and has broken one of the rules of Giaour's contract. She asks him to drown Nouronihar, but Vathek refuses, because he intends to make her his Queen. Carathis then decides to sacrifice Gulchenrouz, but before she can catch him, Gulchenrouz jumps into the arms of a Genie who protects him. That night, Carathis hears that Motavakel, Vathek's brother, is planning to lead a revolt against Morakanabad. Carathis tells Vathek that he has distinguished himself by breaking the laws of hospitality by ‘seducing’ the Emir’s daughter after sharing his bread, and that if he can commit one more crime along the way he shall enter Soliman’s gates triumphant. Vathek continues on his journey, reaches Rocnabad, and degrades and humiliates its citizens for his own pleasure. A Genie asks Mohammed for permission to try to save Vathek from his eternal damnation. He takes the form of a shepherd who plays the flute to make men realize their sins. The shepherd asks Vathek if he is done sinning, warns Vathek about Eblis, ruler of Hell, and asks Vathek to return home, destroy his tower, disown Carathis, and preach Islam. Vathek's pride wins out, and he tells the shepherd that he will continue on his quest for power, and values his mother more than life itself or God's mercy. Vathek's servants desert him; Nouronihar becomes immensely prideful. Finally, Vathek reaches Istakhar, where he finds more swords with writing on them, which says "Thou hast violated the conditions of my parchment, and deserve to be sent back, but in favor to thy companion, and as the meed for what thou hast done to obtain it, Eblis permitted that the portal of this place will receive thee” (108). Giaour opens the gates with a golden key, and Vathek and Nouronihar step through into a place of gold where Genies of both sexes dance lasciviously. Giaour leads them to Eblis, who tells them that they may enjoy whatever his empire holds. Vathek asks to be taken to the talismans that govern the world. There, Soliman tells Vathek that he had once been a great king, but was seduced by a Jinn and received the power to make everyone in the world do his bidding. But because of this, he is destined to suffer in hell for a finite tho vast period - until the waterfall he is sitting beside, stops. This eventual end to his punishment is due to his piety in the earlier part of his reign. The other inmates must suffer the fire in their hearts for all eternity. Vathek asks Giaour to release him, saying he will relinquish all he was offered, but Giaour refuses. He tells Vathek to enjoy his omnipotence while it lasts, for in a few days he will be tormented. Vathek and Nouronihar become increasingly discontented with the palace of flames. Vathek orders an Ifreet to fetch Carathis from the castle. When she arrives, he warns her of what happens to those who enter Eblis' domain, but Carathis takes the talismans of earthly power from Soliman regardless. She gathers the Jinns and tries to overthrow one of the Solimans, but Eblis decrees "It is time." Carathis, Vathek, Nouronihar, and the other denizens of hell lose "the most precious gift granted by heaven - HOPE" (119). They begin to feel eternal remorse for their crimes, their hearts burning with literal eternal fire. “Such was, and should be, the punishment of unrestrained passion and atrocious deeds! Such shall be the chastisement of that blind curiosity, which would transgress those bounds the wisdom the Creator has prescribed to human knowledge; and such the dreadful disappointment of that restless ambition, which, aiming at discoveries reserved for beings of a supernatural order, perceives not, through its infatuated pride, that the condition of man upon earth is to be – humble and ignorant.”

The Elves of Cintra

fantasy

Beginning where Armageddon's Children ended, Knight of the Word Logan Tom races to save the gypsy morph Hawk and his girlfriend Tessa from being thrown to their deaths from atop Safeco Field. He is too late but learns that a brilliant white light enveloped the two as they fell, apparently saved by an unknown magic. Logan doesn't know where they have gone, but sees a demon invasion force preparing to land at Seattle's waterfront. Meanwhile, the Ghosts head toward the agreed upon rendezvous point and Logan Tom goes to find them. While evacuating the city, Panther and Sparrow are separated from the Ghost tribe. The Ghosts encounter a group of mutant children on the freeway, and escape them but not before Squirrel is killed. Logan runs into Panther and Sparrow, helping them fight off Croaks and reunite with the tribe. They leave the city in Logan's all-terrain vehicle as they see the demon hordes besiege Safeco Field. Owl realizes their dog Cheney has gone missing. The Lady of the Word appears to Logan and tells him to head south to the Columbia River where Hawk will meet them with many followers. He is also told that another Knight of the Word will bring the Elves and their magic, upon which humankind's future depends. She tasks him with protecting them all, no matter the cost. As he and the Ghosts travel south, the Weatherman succumbs to plague, and they pick up two new companions, a partially mutated Lizard named Cat (for Catayla) and her pet cat named Rabbit. They also have a run-in with killer robots at Oronyx Experimental Robotics Systems. Later they are ambushed by followers of Krilka Koos, a rogue Knight of the Word that Logan had once heard about (from the Spiders in the mountains when trying to reach Seattle in Armageddon's Children). near Longview. In exchange for the children's safety, Logan agrees to go with them to meet Krilka. Krilka, having fallen from the Word, asks Logan to join his own crusade. Logan refuses and is forced to fight the Knight of the Word surrounded by Krilka's army. Logan Tom narrowly wins, but refuses to kill Krilka, who vows to hunt down and kill Logan and the Ghosts. He then plunges a poison dart into Logan's leg. Delirious, Logan shoots fire from his staff at the crowd, causing them to panic and flee. The ghosts manage to extricate Logan and escape in the ATV. In the Elven city of Arborlon, Kirisin and Erisha are caught in the library by Culph, the King's historian. Culph offers to help them find the seeking Elfstones, revealing that they were buried with the powerful Elven Queen Pancea Rolt Cruer. However, they are unable to find her grave. The Knight of the Word Angel Perezand the tatterdemalion Ailie arrive in the Cintra shortly afterward, escorted by a group of Elven Trackers, including Kirisin's sister Simralin. Angel and Ailie are given an audience with the High Council and the King, while Culph lead Kirisin and Erisha to a vantage point where they can eavesdrop on the meeting. Angel and Ailie tell the Council that they have been sent by the Word to help them take the elves and the Ellcrys to a safe place. Angel has been tasked with helping the Elves to find the Loden Elfstone, and is dismayed to learn that the Elves retain almost no knowledge of the Elfstones. The Council is astounded. The King confirms that Kirisin told him of a warning from the Ellcrys, but didn't inform the Council. The King remains skeptical and orders a more extensive search of the histories and they will reconvene in two days. Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie meet later that night to share information on the Elfstones and theorize as to why the King seems unwilling to help them. Ailie makes a startling revelation, that she sensed a demon at the Council meeting. At the same time, the demon Delloreen (who has now mutated to have an animal-like, scaly form, with virtually no vestiges of any human-like qualities), who had been tracking Angel, enters the Cintra. To her surprise, she finds a fellow demon disguised as an elf. The two become allies with the disguised demon taking command. The following evening, Kirisin, Erisha, Simralin, Angel, and Ailie follow clues to another part of the graveyard and find the Elf Queen's grave. They encounter the shade of the Queen, who nearly kills the party in anger for allowing Elven magic to fade. Instead she forces Kirisin to promise to persuade the Elves to rediscover their magic and to begin using it again. She says that Kirisin has magic that he is currently unaware of and that what he must do, he must do alone. She gives Kirisin the Elfstones and disappears. Delloreen attacks the party in the graveyard, killing Ailie and Erisha. Simralin stabs the beast in the eye with an Elven blade and Delloreen flees. They find they are pursued by the Elven guard and flee the city to seek the Loden. Once clear of the city, Kirisin uses the Elfstones, which direct them to Syrring Rise (current day Mt. Rainier). They head north, still pursued by the two demons. At the Columbia River they find a blind elven ex-tracker named Larkis Quill, who ferries them across as the bridges are all occupied by militias. The three leave Larkis and travel by a secret elven hot air balloon to Syrring Rise. While ascending the snowy peak, Angel senses Delloreen's presence and stays behind. She confronts the demon and blinds it by clawing out its remaining eye. Delloreen is finally killed, but not before savagely injuring Angel. She later awakens from unconsciousness fearing internal injuries, but resumes her climb up the mountain's face. Within the ice caves on the mountain's peak, Kirisin and Simralin find a frozen, life-size statue of a dragon. Deep within the statue's cavernous throat, Kirisin finds the Loden. As he exits the dragon's mouth, however, he and Simralin are assaulted by Culph, who reveals himself as the demon. Simralin is seriously wounded by Culph, and is lying on the floor nearly unconscious. Culph explains that he had been lying to the king but still aiding in the search for the Loden, because the demons believe they can eliminate the elven threat to them by imprisoning them in the Loden. Needing an elf to wield the Loden, Culph tries to cast a mind-controlling spell on Kirisin. However, he lets slip that seeking Elfstones can also be used as weapons in time of great need. Although greatly weakened, Simralin is able to stab Culph in the leg, distracting him. This frees Kirisin from the spell that Culph was just about to complete. Kirisin is then able to direct the seeking Elfstones towards Culph, disintegrating him in blue fire. After disappearing from Safeco Field, Hawk was transported to a strange garden where he meets a mystical old man called the King of the Silver River, who tells him Tessa is safe and sleeping. As they walk through the garden, the old man tells of Hawk's origins and reveals that it was his magic that saved Hawk at the Safeco Field. Finally, the old man tells Hawk that his purpose is to save the human race and that he will lead several thousand Humans, Elves, and others to a Promised Land. As Hawk falls asleep next to Tessa, the old man reveals that Hawk will awaken in his own world with Tessa and Cheney, and that several weeks will have passed. Hawk, Tessa, and Cheney awake to find themselves near the Columbia River. They head upstream and encounter the survivors of the Anaheim Complex that Angel had previously rescued. The survivors are now led by a woman named Helen Rice, who is skeptical that Hawk was sent to guide them to safety. As the group approaches a bridge controlled by militia, Hawk discovers some of his innate magic. He touches some nearby flora, and within minutes, vines and plant life erupt from the ground and subdue the militia. The survivors cross the bridge when Hawk learns that an army led by Findo Gask is approaching from the south. Unknown to Hawk, Findo has sensed the gypsy morph (Hawk) once again and entreats a monstrous demon called "the Klee" to find and destroy it. Despite the approaching danger, Hawk leaves the party with Tessa and Cheney to search for the Ghost tribe, instructing Helen to take in any other refugees she finds. Finally, they find the Ghosts and Logan Tom, who has been in a coma for two days.

Oh. My. Gods.

fantasy

Phoebe is a perfectly happy senior at high school and headed for USC with her best friends after graduation. Everything changes when her Mom comes back to California announcing she is getting married to a Greek man and they have plans to move there. They move to a secret island where she is accepted to an exclusive academy for the descendants of Greek gods, which is run by Phoebe's new stepfather. Phoebe doesn't really fit in, partly because she believes she's not of holy descent. Her new step-sister and others easily torment her, but Phoebe ignores them. At the school, she quickly befriends Nicole and Troy. Phoebe makes it onto her cross country team, running is her natural talent. Soon after, she gets swept up in controversies including her, Griffin, Nicole, Troy, Stella, and her dead dad. At the very end of the book, Phoebe finds out the biggest secret of her life: Phoebe is a descendant of Nike, the goddess of Victory. She then proceeds to talk to Griffin, who tells her he was destined to be with a descendant of Nike. They start a relationship together. *Phoebe Castro, the main character in the book. Her mom gets married, and she has to move to Serfopoula, causing her world to be turned upside down. She has trouble adjusting to her new life. She is a descendant from Nike. *Nicole Matios, one of Phoebe's three friends. Nicole is hardcore and isn't afraid of anything. *Troy Travatas, a friend of Phoebe. He is the descendant from Asclepius. *Griffin Blake, a boy from Phoebe's school that she likes. Later on, he is her boyfriend. He is a descendant from Ares and Hercules from his father's side. *Valerie Petrolas, a therapist and Phoebe's mom. Her relationship with Phoebe went downhill after they moved out to Serfopoula. *Stella Petrolas, Phoebe's stepsister, who tries to make Phoebe's life miserable. Stella is part of the mean and popular clique at school. Likewise, she is a descendant from Hera. *Damian Petrolas, Phoebe's stepfather (marries Phoebe's mother near the beginning of the book) and Stella's father. He is also the headmaster of the school that Phoebe and Stella attend.

Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams

fantasy

After her village is destroyed, Ayako lives alone in the mountains. Weaving through Ayako's life are her dreams; she explores the mythologies of goddesses from around the world and receives lessons from the river, mountain, and animals, who speak to her while the people from the village below dare only to leave offerings for her. =Allusions= Ayako's dreams touch upon a variety of literary, mythological, and religious subjects, ranging from the Greek Sphinx to Isis' recreation of Osiris' body.

Angel-Seeker

fantasy

Samaria is a changed land. Corrupt politicians are gone. The poor are not so destitute. The Edori are no longer slaves. Elizabeth is a young, healthy farm-girl. Tired of her lot in life, she leaves for Cedar Hills with one goal in mind. To birth the child of one of the powerful Angel beings and live in the lap of luxury for the rest of her natural life. The story also focuses on the isolated life of Rebekah, a Jansai woman and the Angel Obadiah, whom she nurses back to health after he is wounded flying over the desert. * Archangel (Ace Books, 1997) * Jovah's Angel (Ace Books, 1998) * The Alleluia Files (Ace Books, 1999) * Angelica (Ace Books, 2003) Although this is the fourth novel in the Samaria series, it is set before the first book Archangel. * Angel-Seeker (Ace Books, 2004)

The Steerswoman

fantasy

The story begins with the Steerswoman Rowan investigating the origins of a number of beautiful blue crystals that have been found in random locations throughout the land, highly polished and cut, but simply sprinkled throughout as if by a giant throwing them toward the east. During her investigation at an inn, she meets Bel, an outspoken Outskirter who can turn a marvelous tale. After leaving the next day, Rowan is later attacked on the road by another former guest at the inn, and Bel comes to her rescue, easily hefting a sword and making quick work of the attacker. The two women agree to travel together for a ways, as Rowan can see the benefit of having Bel around, and the Outskirter wants to explore the area and could use a guide. However, Rowan makes Bel to agree to not use any knowledge she gleans from Rowan’s help to allow her tribe to attack the outlying villages, which Outskirters do on occasion when their goats cannot sustain them. The pair make their way back to Rowan’s Steerswoman Academy to check in, quickly becoming fast friends despite their differences. Bel’s blunt nature and Rowan’s honesty sometimes get them into pinches, but they’re always able to work their way out. As they’re preparing to leave by ship to make it to the Academy, the inn they’re staying at is attacked by dragons. The pair manage to escape the fire breathers and set sail with a particularly obnoxious man and his lad in tow. While on the boat, Rowan and Bel converse with some of the sailors about magic, and one of them shows them a box in the hold that has been magicked for the voyage. When Bel is close to it, she can feel a warning buzz and a touch sparks her hand away from it. Rowan feels nothing, which the sailor tells her is a side effect of her being a Steerswoman. They dare the young lad to touch it, and he is sparked as well. When they’ve nearly arrived, they find the body of the boy next to the chest. He’s tried to open it, and was killed by the protection spell. Rowan makes it to the Academy and fills her fellow Steerswomen in. They agree that she needs to continue to investigate, but in a different manner than before, as her current investigations are drawing notice and attempts on her life (the man from the inn, the dragons) and suggest she goes undercover. This is very much against Rowan’s truthful nature and she resists, but eventually agrees it is the best way. At this point, the story switches perspective to a young runaway named Will, who has a talent for making things explode, much in the way wizards do sometimes. He joins up a caravan headed away from his home and the reader eventually realizes two of his traveling companions are Rowan and Bel, traveling in disguise. Will becomes very attached to Bel and although the pair try to get rid of him as they leave the caravan to continue their investigation, he follows along to help out. Bel and Rowan come to the town they intent to investigate as a rumored source of the stones and find a shopkeeper who claims to design and sell the stones himself. With Will’s help, the pair discover this to be a false trail left for them, and quickly leave town, pretending to believe the story. However, they are stalked by a group of soldiers who have orders to capture them and bring them to a pair of wizards, Dhree and Shammer, a brother and sister who Rowan eventually learns are under the control of a wizard named Slado. She and Bel slip into the stronghold of the wizards disguised as guards until Rowan is captured. Rowan is surprised to discover that Dhree and Shammer are barely teenagers, and probably too young to actually be in control. She is able to converse with them by giving them information freely and not asking them any questions that they would refuse to answer, thereby earning them the ban. The siblings talk amongst themselves in her presence and she gleans valuable information from them for a time before they shut her up in a room to wait for Slado to arrive and take her. But Bel and Will spring her from her prison through the distraction of Will’s exploding magic. Back at the Academy, the Steerswomen put together the clues they have gathered and conclude that the blue stones are pieces of a fallen guidestar, brought down for some unknown reason by the wizards, who may have put them up there in the first place. Rowan plays the same information game she did with Dhree and Shammer with another wizard who isn’t exactly loyal to Slado and learns a lot. She also gets him to take Will on as an apprentice. Will promises to share information about wizard magic with the Steerswomen as long as he finds that there isn’t a good reason for the information to be kept secret.

The Illearth War

fantasy

Several weeks after returning to his world from The Land, the leper Thomas Covenant is taking a phone call from his ex-wife Joan when he falls and hits his head, waking to find himself back in the Land, in the chamber of the Council of Lords of Revelstone. Angered by the fact that he has been transported away from "reality", Covenant nevertheless believes he is once again experiencing a dream or delusion due to his head injury. His hypothesis is supported by the fact that the Land has seen the passing of forty years compared to the few weeks that have passed in his own world: the High Lord of the Council is Elena, the daughter of Lena and the product of Covenant's rape (though he does not know this when he first returns), and now, Covenant's summoner. Elena shows no ill will towards her biological father, and she and Covenant become close friends. Elena explains that the evil Lord Foul has assembled a massive army, with which he now threatens the people of The Land. For forty years, the Lords have dedicated themselves to the study of Kevin's Lore, training new students at the school at the tree city of Revelwood. Only Mhorham remains from Lords of the council during the quest for the Staff of Law, but seven new Lords have taken their seats, having mastered both the magical and martial arts. The horse-tending Ramen have been enlisted to patrol the frontier near Foul's dominions. The Warward, the army of Revelstone, is full of battle-ready volunteers and is led by Hile Troy, who came to the Land from Covenant's world. An attempt was even made to attack Lord Foul directly, via a commando raid on his lair at the Land's eastern edge; although the raid, led by Lord Mhoram, failed, valuable knowledge was gained about Foul's forces. The commander of Foul's army is one of three brothers of the race of Giants, a people previously thought incorruptible. With the aid of the powerful Illearth Stone, Foul's non-corporeal servants, the Ravers, have possessed the three brothers, now renamed Kinslaughterer, Fleshharrower and Satansfist. In shame and despair, the other Giants offer no resistance as Kinslaughterer murders them all in their home city. Thus, the Lords have lost their strongest and bravest ally in the fight against evil. Nevertheless, the Lords resolve to meet the enemy on the battlefield. Hile Troy is a genius in military tactics who developed a mystical form of sight when hurtloam, a magical mud with miraculous curative properties, was used to try and "heal" his lack of eyes. (The hurtloam used to heal Covenant's head injury also has the effect of "curing" his leprosy). While Troy leads the army to confront Fleshharrower's attacking force, Elena and Covenant go in search of the Seventh Ward, a repository of ancient magical power which Elena believes will ensure victory. Covenant, Elena and their two Bloodguard protectors journey through the remote mountain region on the western frontier of the Land to the hiding place of the Ward. Elena gains the power, but foolishly uses it to summon the long dead High Lord Kevin from his grave, and send him against Lord Foul. This act breaks the Law of Death, the barrier preventing the souls of the dead from interfering in the world of the living. Kevin's spirit is easily defeated and then enslaved by Foul wielding the Illearth Stone, and commanded to destroy Elena. The two High Lords engage in a battle of magic, in which Elena and her Bloodguard are defeated and killed, and the Staff of Law lost again. Covenant is able to save himself and his Bloodguard by using the power of his white gold ring, again without understanding how. Meanwhile Hile Troy has been forced into a desperate retreat by the superior force of the Raver's army to the edge of a dangerous, forbidding forest known as Garroting Deep. In desperation, he begs the aid of Caerroil Wildwood, an immortal Forestal who is charged with protecting the ancient forests of the Land from the Ravers. Wildwood brings the forest to life, totally destroying Foul's army, and personally "garrotes" Fleshharrower. The victory is a Pyrrhic one, however: the Lords' army is nearly obliterated, and Hile Troy has sacrificed himself as the price for the Forestal's aid, becoming Wildwood's immortal apprentice. The war thus ends in a draw, and with the death of High Lord Elena his summoner, Covenant once again returns to his own world. His ex-wife has long since hung up the phone, and he is a leper once more.

The Hidden Valley of Oz

fantasy

Jonathan Andrew Manley, nicknamed Jam, is a boy from Ohio, the son of a biologist. At the start of the story, he is building a "collapsible kite" from plans he found in a popular magazine. Rather than cutting the pieces of his wooden frame to match the plans, however, he scales up the kite to match the size of his wood, yielding an extra-large result. The size of the thing inspires him to try to fly on it; he attaches a shipping crate, and gathers up three of his father's experimental animals (two guinea pigs and a white lab rat). A strong gust of wind lifts kite, crate, and passengers into the sky; Jam is on his way to Oz. Kite and crate thump down the next day, in the purple landscape of the Gillikin Country. Jam is amazed to find that his animals can now talk; the guinea pigs call themselves Pinny and Gig, while the white rat introduces himself as Percy. Jam meets some of the inhabitants, who inform him of local conditions. This remote valley of Oz is dominated by a wrathful giant, fifty feet tall, called Terp the Terrible, who enslaves the common people to work in his vineyards and his jam-making factory. Terp captures Jam, and is struck by his name; the giant threatens to spread the boy on his breakfast muffins the next day, and eat him. Terp imprisons the boy and his animals in the highest tower of his castle. The courtyard of Terp's castle contains a magic muffin tree, guarded by a fierce monster (it has an elephant's body, alligator's tail, and two heads, a nocturnal owl and a diurnal wolf). In the night, Percy is able to help Jam and friends escape the tower, with the aid of a handy grapevine. Jam and his pets flee, though Percy doubles back to steal one of the magic muffins. On the Gillikin plains, Jam and friends are menaced by the Equinots, hostile centaurs; Percy frightens away the Equinots when he eats some of the magic muffin, and grows to ten times his normal size. A local farmer and his wife provide shelter for the night; Pinny and Gig, who have little taste for adventure, decide to stay at the farm as pets of the farmer's children. Another kite flight takes Jam and Percy to the tin castle of the Emperor of the Winkies, the Tin Woodman. There, the party is soon joined by Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Hungry Tiger. After hearing Jam's tale, the assembled party decide to defeat Terp and free the oppressed Gillikins. Their path from the Winkie Country to the Gillikin lands leads through a wilderness; a commotion in the jungle brings them a new friend, the Leopard with the Changeable Spots. They enter Bookville, where a hostile King and court condemn them to be pressed into books. (The animated books resemble the playing cards in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The idea of changing size by eating a food also links the two works.) Percy gnaws the travelers a way out of their bookshelf prison during the night. Another disagreeable adventure awaits them in Icetown; to escape an igloo prison, the Scarecrow volunteers his stuffing as kindling for a fire. (The Scarecrow made a similar sacrifice to placate the Hip-po-gy-raf in The Tin Woodman of Oz.) The travelers, with a re-stuffed Scarecrow, eventually reach the Gillikin Country and the Hidden Valley. Percy's shrinking-and-growing experiences with the magic muffin have made them realize that Terp needs a steady supply of muffins to maintain his giant stature. Jam and company, with local collaboration, lure Terp away from his castle, and hypnotize the guardian beast into harmlessness; The Tin Man chops down the magic tree, killing it. Terp is trapped in the smokestack of the jam factory until he shrinks to his normal size. The party travel to the Emerald City, where Jam is welcomed as a hero; after a celebratory banquet, Ozma and the Wizard send the boy home to Ohio once more. Percy remains in Oz, and convinces the Wizard to enchant him into his large size permanently. ---- Cosgrove originally intended to have Jam travel to Oz by rocket, but the publishers informed her that that had already been done in The Yellow Knight of Oz. Cosgrove's original opening was published posthumously in an issue of Oz-story Magazine. She later gave an account of how she wrote and revised Hidden Valley and worked with the personnel at Reilly & Lee. Her article appeared in The Baum Bugle, and was later included as an Afterword in the 1991 edition of Hidden Valley. Cogrove began work on a second Oz book soon after finishing the first; but Reilly & Lee declined it, due to low sales for Oz books in the 1950s. The work would finally appear in print forty years later.

Transformers: Exodus – The Official History of the War for Cybertron

fantasy

The story is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. It has been several centuries since Cybertron's golden age of space exploration and planetary colonisation, and Cybertron's society has declined into a state of decadence. The planet's many Space Bridges have went offline due to years of neglect, and as a result Cybertron has lost contact with the other planets that the Transformers colonised during the golden age. When a new Transformer is born from the Well of All Sparks (which contains the AllSpark, the device that creates new Transformers), they are assigned to a caste and guild from which they may never deviate throughout their lives. Castes are separated into a hierarchy, with the highest castes relating to science, art and government, while the lower castes are given to manual labourers in factories and underground mines. Those in the lowest castes are not given individual names. In the industrial city of Kaon, gladiatorial combat grows in popularity among the lower castes. One of the gladiators, a labourer who completely opposes the caste system and calls himself "Megatronus" after one of the original thirteen Transformers, rises to power and becomes a local celebrity due to his skills in the gladiatorial pits. Megatronus' fans and followers shorten his name to "Megatron" in their chants, and the name sticks. In the city of Iacon, a clerk named Orion Pax, who works in Cybertron's Hall of Records and also dislikes the caste system, begins watching Megatron's political speeches and eventually contacts Megatron to discuss their similar political views. Megatron champions a free Cybertron, with each individual determining their own path in life, and Orion finds this highly appealing. Orion turns for guidance to his supervisor and mentor Alpha Trion, who encourages him to meet with Megatron in Kaon, cryptically stating that a great destiny awaits both Orion and Megatron. Taking Alpha Trion's advise, Orion travels to Kaon and meets Megatron in person, along with two of his followers, Shockwave and Soundwave. Orion and Megatron engage in intense but friendly debates over the nature of free will, and they find broad agreement in the need for a new form of Cybertronian government. However, Megatron favours confrontation and revolution, while Orion hopes to inspire the masses to change the system from within. As Megatron's political movement gains power, it also grows more violent. Terrorists professing allegiance to Megatron commit multiple bombings across Cybertron, one of these bombings destroys the "Six Lasers Over Cybertron" amusement park. Megatron repeatedly states in public speeches that he does not know the terrorists and did not orchestrate these attacks, and at one point Orion even vocally defends him. The terrorists then attack the Altihex Casino in the city of Altihex, where Sentinel Prime (the main political leader of Cybertron) is attending a show. When the bombings start, Sentinel relies on his three bodyguards, Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker, to escort him to safety. However, the three bodyguards are actually part of the plot as well, and they take Sentinel to Kaon and present him to Megatron. Starscream flirts with joining Megatron's forces, but seeing Sentinel as a potential bargaining chip he doesn't allow Megatron to kill him, and instead orders Skywarp and Thundercracker to take Sentinel to Trypticon Station, a scientific space station that orbits Cybertron. To prevent an all-out war, Alpha Trion helps Orion and Megatron secure an audience before the Cybertron High Council in order to plead their case. The Council members are hostile to any notion of change and view Megatron as nothing but a criminal. Megatron continues to disown the terrorist attacks being committed in his name but continues to appeal for the total removal of the caste system, including the Council itself. His words are supported by the lower castes in the council's audience, who have started calling themselves "Decepticons". By contrast, Orion makes a more noble appeal to the Council. He points out that earlier generations of Transformers would never have been able to repel the Quintessons (an alien race that tried to invade Cybertron centuries ago) if they had been constrained by such a caste system. He proclaims their fuller potential as a race if each individual were to be acknowledged as an autonomous robot, using the ancient term "Autobot" as an expression of that ideal. After his speech, the Council member Halogen agrees that the two radicals might have a point, and that Cybertronian society might have become too static for its own good. Recognizing the depth of the crisis that Cybertron faces, Halogen asserts that they need new visionary leadership to guide a social rebirth. The Council, impressed by Orion's morals, appoint Orion as the new leader of Cybertron, giving him a new name and title: Optimus Prime. However, Orion's sudden elevation destroys his friendship with Megatron, who is outraged and believes the situation to be a set-up. Megatron kills Halogen at once, but as the crowd marshals for war, Optimus Prime manages to convince Megatron not to commit further violence within the Council halls. The two sides retreat from the halls and the great war between Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Decepticons begins. The war is brutal and largely one-sided. The Autobots retain control of two cities, Iacon and Kalis, while the Decepticons take over everywhere else on the planet. Out of desperation, the Autobots launch the AllSpark into space to keep Megatron from gaining control of the source of Transformer life. Seeking a new advantage, Megatron orders Starscream to give him access to Trypticon Station's stockpile of Dark Energon, a power-enhancing substance that according to legend is the blood of the mythical being Unicron. The Decepticons consume the Dark Energon and become extremely powerful, gaining a combat edge and overwhelming the struggling Autobots. Megatron then seeks control of the Plasma Energy Chamber at Cybertron's core, planning to flood it with Dark Energon, which would permanently empower his own forces while poisoning Cybertron and starving the Autobots to death. But in order to activate the Chamber, he needs to acquire two code keys. One of these keys is stored within Sentinel Prime's chest, and Megatron acquires it by brutally murdering him. Before Megatron can fully activate the Plasma Energy Chamber though, the Autobots reactivate Omega Supreme, an enormous robot that transforms into both a rocket ship and a city, and once served as Cybertron's guardian. While transforming from a city to a rocket ship, Omega Supreme nearly crushes Megatron and the Decepticons, but they narrowly avoid getting killed by the giant. Omega Supreme takes off with the Plasma Energy Chamber and attempts to fly it to safety, but Starscream leads an aerial assault that manages to shoot him down, and after Megatron empowers himself with Dark Energon, he effortlessly defeats the Autobots and Omega Supreme's robot mode. He then floods the Plasma Energy Chamber with Dark Energon and sends it back into the core of Cybertron. As the Dark Energon flows throughout Cybertron, Optimus Prime ventures into the core to fix the Plasma Energy Chamber, accompanied by the Autobots Bumblebee and Jetfire. Once they find it, Bumblebee manages to extract the Chamber from the core, stopping the flow of Dark Energon, and Optimus receives a mental communication from the core itself, which is sentient. With the flow of Dark Energon stopped, the core will eventually be able to heal itself, but it will take centuries, and during that time the core will not be able to generate enough Energon to sustain the population it currently does. The Transformers will either have to abandon the planet until it heals, or risk starvation. To show him not to lose hope, the core bestows Optimus Prime with the Matrix of Leadership. Seeing that the planet will soon be uninhabitable, Optimus Prime orders a mass exodus of the Autobot army, but most of the ships are shot down by Trypticon Station. One Autobot ship, the Eight Track, is able to link up to Trypticon Station and force it to crash into Cybertron, but as it falls the station transforms into an enormous, reptilian monster and goes on a rampage. Alpha Trion grows ever more despairing for Cybertron, and he sets a radical plan into motion: the construction of the largest spaceship in Cybertronian history, the Ark, on which most of the Autobots may escape. Several Autobots, including Alpha Trion, Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and a newly-repaired Omega Supreme, volunteer to stay on Cybertron and protect what little territory the Autobots still hold. Despite Optimus's strong wishes, Alpha Trion refuses to leave Cybertron and declares the time has come for Optimus to make his own command decisions without his advise. As most of the Autobots flee to the Ark and it takes off into space, Megatron commands Trypticon to transform into an equally large spaceship, the Nemesis, in which Megatron and most of the Decepticons will give pursuit. Before they leave, Megatron appoints Shockwave as the dictator of Cybertron, ordering him to destroy all remaining Autobots by the time Megatron returns. With the Nemesis in hot pursuit, the Autobots fly the Ark to the last intact Space Bridge, but because no one alive knows how to use it, there is no guarantee taht the Space Bridge will work. But as the two giant spaceships get within range of the Space Bridge, it does indeed activate and teleports them to an uncharted part of space. With no Decepticons in sight, The Ark detects the energy signature of the AllSpark. Optimus Prime orders the Ark pilots to follow the signal, and their adventure in space begins.

Dark Quetzal

fantasy

Promising final year novice Kyarra is disappointed when she alone in her class is forbidden from going to the beach to try to contact the merlee about the disappearance of Rialle. Although she has moved up a year because of her promising voice, she fears that she will be rejected and turned into an orderly. Her sense of disappointment is only worsened when her best friend Caell hears the merlee, and receives a message from them that Kyarra's parents were not Singers. The merlee claim her mother is living in Windy Corner, waiting to hear from Kyarra, and together, Kyarra and Caell sneak out to find her. They arrive just in time to find Kyarra's mother being kidnapped - Kyarra is also taken, apparently expected to have come, and Caell tries to follow them with the merlee and is nearly drowned. Meanwhile, in the Quetzal Forest, Night Plume, the black-feathered leader of a flock of quetzal, is annoyed to be sent for by the Starmaker - Frazhin, who is using the khiz to brainwash and control groups of half-creatures raised by his priests, including the merlee who sent the message to Caell. Night Plume is asked to listen to Rialle as she is fed a memory drug made from yellow flowers, and store what he hears about the Starmaker's daughter - Kyarra - in the Memoryplace, the quetzal's collective ancestral memory. He does as he is asked, but Rialle's songs begin to break the Starmaker's hold on him, and when he is released he attempts to make contact with wild quetzal, getting himself and his friend Sky Swooper in trouble. Although Frazhin still believes Night Plume is under his control, he holds Sky Swooper captive to ensure loyalty. Summoning Night Plume to the temple, Frazhin orders him and his flock to accompany Kyarra on her journey through Quetzal Forest - although Night Plume is distracted by a message in Wild Speech from Rialle imploring him to fly to the Echorium for help. Kyarra is transported to the edge of Quetzal Forest by Asil, a famous pirate. On the journey she is watched over by Asil's daughter Jilian who, along with the rest of the pirates, wears khiz stars to protect themselves from Kyarra's singing. She also bonds with her mother, who was left helpless by the Yehn she was given and is completely incapable of caring for herself. Nevertheless, Kyarra feels very protective of her, and sings one of the pirates Shi for attempting to harm her. The group just reach the edge of the forest when they are suddenly attacked by wild quetzal. Kyarra's song helps herself, her mother and Jilian escape, but they are unexpectedly captured by Shaiala and some centaurs with herstones. Recognising Yashra, Shaiala takes the group and other captured pirates to the Kaleri. Night Plume's flock arrives just in time to see Kyarra vanish into green light, and Night Plume realises he, unlike the enchanted quetzal, is free to travel past the edge of the Forest. He orders the flock to delay their return, and flies over the sea, but cannot find the island. Instead he lands on a ship, where he meets Caell, Renn and Kherron journeying to the mainland to search for Kyarra. When he reveals his ability to speak human speech, Kherron becomes suspicious, particularly as Night Plume admits to being raised by Frazhin. Night Plume faithfully passes on Rialle's message, including a warning that Frazhin is trying to poison the Echorium, and that he saw Kyarra vanish into green light - a sign Renn recognises as being Shaiala's work. They reach Silvertown and learn it has been poisoned - although for most residents this is not fatal - and the group encounters Lord Azri. Telling him about Frazhin, Azri agrees they must seek him out and attack, but the Singers must first fulfill their obligation to Kyarra and head to the Purple Plains to look for her. In the Horselord's camp, Kyarra is horrified to learn of her mother's crimes, and maintains that her punishment was undeserved. WHile she is glad to hear that Yashra will be cared for by the Harai, she is horrified to learn that Jilian is to be used as bait for her father, putting her in great danger. At a meeting, the Horselords hear a prophecy from Speaks Many Tongues, an inhabitant of Quetzal Forest, warning of doom when the dark quetzal flies. As the prophecy is spoken, Frazhin's quetzal attack the camp and, in the confusion, Kyarra frees Jilian and escapes with Speaks Many Tongues into the forest. Night Plume, scouting ahead for the Singers, learns from his flock that Frazhin has punished Sky Swooper for Night Plume's disappearance. The flock attack Night Plume, and he is badly injured, although the arrival of the Singers protects him from the angry Horselords. Kyarra, Jilian and Speaks Many Tongues journey into the forest, where Speaks Many Tongues insists on them meeting Xiancotl, the forest people's holy man, and travelling with him into the quetzal Memoryplace using yellow flowers. Before their arrival, they meet Shaiala, who has followed them with some centaurs, and she is invited to join them in the memory trance. Each girl asks a question: Shaiala successfully learns that the centaurs are uncorruptible because they do not hatch from eggs, but when Kyarra attempts to discover how to heal her mother, the memory trance is interrupted and instead she receives a summons from Frazhin. The disruption causes Xiancotl and Kyarra to pass out, and in the panic this causes Jilian, Shaiala and Kyarra escape to the centaurs. However, on Kyarra's insistence, they allow Frahin's naga to take her to him, where she hopes she will be able to subdue him with her Songs. The Singers and the Horselords regroup and prepare to head into the Forest and attack Frazhin. Although initially concerned for Kyarra, they are appeased when Speaks Many Tongues informs them that she disappeared with Shaiala. Speaks Many Tongues warns that Frazhin is planning to use the yellow flowers gathered by Night Plume's flock to travel into the quetzal Memoryplace and replace it with one of his own making, in which Singers will no longer exist. Although most of the Singers are horrified by this, Kherron is distracted by the promise of a miracle healing potion which Speaks Many Tongues suggests might heal his voice. The next day, the army travels into the Forest and surrounds the volcano where Frazhin has made his Temple, which is beginning to erupt as he prepares to enter the Memoryplace. With the help of the centaurs, who arrive with Shaiala and Jilian, the army breaches the crater and begins searching for Frazhin. Although Caell and Night Plume are told to wait outside, they grow restless, and make their way into the crater. Night Plume is horrified to see the bodies of the eldest and youngest quetzal, who were useless for the memory trance, along with Sky Swooper, punished for his disappearance by having her wings cut off before she was killed. Using wild speech, Night Plume breaks the memory trance on the other quetzal, and reasserts his leadership of the flock. Kyarra is taken by Frazhin to a ball made of crystal, called the Fane. Frazhin plans to seal the pair of them inside it, and then be rolled into the volcano to protect them from the approaching Singers. Within the Fane, they will use the Memoryplace - its power heightened by the captive quetzal and the yellow flower drug sent to the Isle of the Echoes and Silvertown - to change history so that Yashra is healed and the Singers do not exist. Although reluctant, Kyarra feels she has no choice but to get into the Fane. Just as it is sealed, Caell arrives, making Kyarra believe that the memory trance has brought him back from being drowned by merlee. Although the Singers rescue the Fane from the priests and end the volcano's eruption, they are unable to open the Fane, within which Kyarra is rapidly running out of air. Feeling they have no choice, Renn, Rialle, Caell, Night Plume and a newly-healed Kherron sing Yehn, hoping that it will break Frazhin's power. Although the Fane opens, the Yehn does not affect Frazhin, and he takes Kyarra hostage before being brought down by Night Plume and Jilian. Five years later, Kyarra wakes from the Yehn with the help of the forest people's potions, and is greeted by a reformed Lady Yashra, also healed, along with Night Plume, Caell, Jilian and Rialle. Although she is initially confused, she learns that Frazhin is dead and the Half Creatures are free again. Frazhin has been revealed to be a half-Singer child who was born on the Isle, but rejected from the Echorium because of his resistance to the Songs. Kyarra resolves to learn how to become both a Singer and a Harai princess, and plans to becomes the Echorium's first female Second Singer.

The Naama War

fantasy

Warfare on a cataclysmic scale is convulsing the continent of Nyumbani from north to south. Soldiers fall. Cities burn. Blood reddens the sea. Sorcery sears the land. Deities gather in opposite dimensions, poised to unleash unimaginable cosmic power on a land already battered by the Cushites of the North and the Naamans of the South. In the midst of this massive struggle, Imaro, warrior of the Ilyassai, wages a personal war against his nemesis, the sorcerer Bohu of Naama. This individual vendetta mirrors the larger clash between the forces of good and evil – a confrontation that threatens to tear Nyumbani apart. The destiny for which Imaro has been honed like a living weapon now lies directly before him. Imaro vs. Bohu. Cush vs. Naama. War. Magic. Blood. Fire. The losers in this wide ranging battle for the fate of a continent face oblivion. But the winners will not emerge unscathed.

Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star

fantasy

At the end of the school year Kendra finds a kobold, that has infiltrated her eighth grade. She can see without a magical milk that can make her see things she cant see without it because the year before the fairies kissed her and gave her power to see mythical creatures. To her he seems ugly but to everyone else he seems like every girl's dream. She knows this has problems written all over it. At the end of the day a man named Errol is just outside their school door saying he can get rid of the problem for them. Seth ( Kendra's brother) must get a magical item from a mortuary that is age protected from 13 and older. Seth is the only one that can enter. When he gets the item, it bites him and teeth marks are left in his skin. Later, Errol asks Kendra and Seth to help them retrieve another object that can help save their grandparent's preserve. Kendra is not so sure and calls her Grandpa Sorenson but doesn't respond. After many failed attempts her grandpa finally calls back and tells them to not go with him and that it is possible a trap. He says that a ride is coming for them and to not get out of the house till then. So Seth and Kendra wait until a red sports car shows up. A lady named Vanessa picks them up but Errol pursues them until they reach the preserve. They get away and get to the preserve safely in a short two hours. The Society of the Evening Star, an ancient organization determined to overthrow magical preserves and use them for their own intents and purposes, it is determined to infiltrate Fablehaven. Worst yet, word is abroad that the Society of the Evening Star is rising and working its mischief faster than ever. Preserves are falling at an alarming rate. Grandpa Sorenson, the caretaker, invites three specialists approved by the mysterious Sphinx to help around the property: "Tanu" the Potion Master, Coulter, a magical relics collector and old friend, and Vanessa, a mystical creature trapper. In addition, these three specialists have a more perilous assignment— to find an artifact of great power hidden on the property that is a piece of a key to the great demon prison, Zzyzx. Zzyzx houses hundreds of thousands of the worst demons. Should Zzyzx open, the world as they know would end. Later,The Sphinx meets with Kendra and Seth to discuss the situation. After giving Kendra an uncharged magical object, he determines her fairykind, and not "very kind." Being fairykind is a completely unusual thing that hadn't happened for centuries. Then, the Sphinx speaks to Seth and explains that Olloch the Glutton will prove perilous to Seth as long as it exists. Olloch's only goal is to consume Seth. After being fed by him in the beginning of the book. Olloch will continue to consume creatures until he is big enough and strong enough to destroy everything preventing him from Seth. When Olloch the Glutton pervades the gates of Fablehaven, all evidence points towards the fact that someone inside the preserve is a traitor. Which of the three visitors is it? If the artifact falls into the wrong hands, it could mean the downfall of other preserves and possibly the world. With good intent, Kendra and Seth become both a help and hindrance to their grandfather’s cry to protect Fablehaven. Coulter woke Seth and persuaded him to come to an extremely dangerous portion of Fablehaven, where Warren lost his mind. In the morning at the house, Kendra is thoroughly depressed about the supposed death of her brother. Grandpa finally resolves that Coulter was not acting of his own agency because his plan was so clumsy. That night, Dale was caught in the Thief's Net guarding an artificial key. Dale had gone to sleep and woke up there. Suddenly, all the evidence matched up and the traitor seized control of the house. In order to save their family, friends, the preserve, and ultimately the world, Kendra and Seth must take huge risks they would never have dreamed of doing had the situation been less perilous. The fate of the world rested on their shoulders.

A Song of Stone

fantasy

Abel and Morgan live in a small castle in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join the refugees seeking safety. A group of irregulars led by "The Lieutenant" (or "Loot") stops them and takes them back to the castle, which they proceed to fortify as a base. The soldiers loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by Loot. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack. When they return, Abel almost shoots Loot and there is a violent and nihilistic ending. A Song of Stone tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of incest, violence and war are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat Abel, the vacuous and submissive Morgan, the ruthless Loot, and her soldiers with names like "Psycho", "Karma" and "Deathwish". The story is told by Abel in the first person. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person, mostly when she is in his direct view. As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname. The violence of war is described graphically.

The Enchanted Castle

fantasy

The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Gerald, James and Kathleen, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden they find a sleeping fairy-tale princess. The "princess" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper's niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. The children soon discover that the ring has other magical powers. The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults. It combines descriptions of the imaginative play of children, reminiscent of The Story of the Treasure Seekers, with a magic more muted than in her major fantasies such as The Story of the Amulet.

Wind from the Abyss

fantasy

Wind From the Abyss picks up approximately two years after the battle for Well Astria during which two Bipedal Federation ships and crew were destroyed accidentally. Khys, the “dharen” or ruler of Silistra for thousands of years, has captured Estri, Sereth and Chayin, taking them to his exclusive city/keep at the Lake of Horns. Before being captured by Khys, Estri, Sereth, a former Slayer turned renegade, and Chayin, Cahndor of a Parset desert tribe, form a triad of sexuality and power as foretold in an ancient prophecy that threatens Khys’ rule of the planet. Immediately after the Well Astria battle, Estri, Chayin and Sereth are captured by Khys, tyrant ruler of Silistra (“the dharen”) and held hostage for over 2 years. He knows these three are key in maintaining control of the planet. He has Estri’s memories blocked so she will not attempt to wrest control from him; Estri’s journey to understand her “Shaper” heritage is interrupted. Estri regains her memory after Khys’ council fails to get information locked in her mind by her father. Khys and Estri are taken to a planet to meet Estrazi (Estri’s father) and Khystrai (Khys’ father) who tell Khys he must start over with this uninhabited planet because he has failed to govern Silistra well enough for the last 25,000 years. Estri is returned to Silistra alone and materializes in the midst of a battle between the Parset desert tribes and the privileged “Lakeborn” who live in the city of the dharen. She is reunited with Chayin and Sereth and they renew their bond to each other, although Estri fears she will hold them back with the “slave” mentality Khys forced on her. Khys returns by himself, insistent on dueling with Sereth, but is in such a depleted condition that Sereth kills him fairly easily, making Sereth the ruler of Silistra. Sereth leaves Carth, an associate of Khys and Estri’s teacher/brainwasher, to run the city but arrange it so the city cannot be rebuilt and returned to its former glory. They decide to move many of the “Lakeborn” to other parts of the planet to intermix blood lines and strengthen the Silistran gene pool. Estri, Chayin and Sereth finally admit to themselves they are the people spoken of in an ancient prophecy and they must play out the rest of their fate. They take ship to explore a continent Khys had kept off-limits for generations. Estri’s journey of self-awareness and the trio’s fulfillment of the “Seker’oth prophecy” (which means “Golden Sword”) conclude in The Carnelian Throne, the final book in the Silistra series.

The Scarecrow of Oz

fantasy

Cap'n Bill, a sailor with a wooden peg-leg, and his friend, a little girl named Trot, set out from California on a calm day for a short ride in their row-boat. The calm day suddenly turns dark and stormy and Cap'n Bill and Trot are washed overboard and are carried by mermaids (referred to but not seen) to a cave where they meet an ostrich-like flying creature called an Ork. Flying on the Ork's back, the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot strain to arrive at an island where a grim man calling himself Pessim the Observer points out that the Ork should not have eaten the light lavender berries growing on the island. The light lavender berries cause a person to shrink, and the dark purple berries cause a person to grow. Once the Ork resumes normal size, Cap'n Bill and Trot leave the island to escape the Observer's negative attitude—which drove the people in his homeland to exile him here in the first place. To reduce the load on the Ork, Cap'n Bill and Trot each eat a light lavender berry so they are small enough to carry in Trot's bonnet. Flying away from the island, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Ork alight in the land of Mo, one of Baum's non-Oz creations. They meet the Bumpy Man, who specializes in serving sugar and molasses and has some of their appearance too. After dining on Mo rain (lemonade) and Mo snow (popcorn), they run into Button Bright, the sailor boy from The Road to Oz who has gotten lost again. Cap'n Bill calls down some of the native birds (who, like all birds in fairy countries, can talk back) and offers them the dark purple berries to make them grow large enough to carry himself, Trot, and Button-Bright (for the Ork can fly) to the land of Oz across the Deadly Desert to the north of them. When they make it across the desert, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot are set down in a field and the Ork leaves them to find his own country, which he got lost from on a routine flight. The place Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, and Trot have arrived in, Jinxland, has had a turbulent recent history. The rightful king of Jinxland, King Kynd, was killed by his prime minister Phearse, who was in turn killed by his prime minister Krewl. Now King Krewl rules over the land and seeks to marry King Kynd's daughter, Princess Gloria, to legitimize his claim to the throne. However, she wants nothing to do with him or another suitor, Googly-Goo; she is in love with Pon, the current gardener who is the son of the first usurper Phearse. King Krewl and Googly-Goo decide that if neither of them can have Gloria, no one can, and hire a witch named Blinkie to freeze her heart so she can love no one. Cap'n Bill happens on this plot, and to keep him from interfering, Blinkie turns him into a grasshopper. The Scarecrow is at Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country and learns about these events from reading Glinda's Great Book of Records, a magical volume which transcribes every event in the world at the instant it happens. The Scarecrow wants to help Cap'n Bill, Button-Bright, and Trot, and Glinda sends him to Jinxland with some of her magic to aid him. The Scarecrow uses a magic thread to cross the gorge separating Jinxland from the rest of the Quadling Country, and before he meets Cap'n Bill and Trot, he encounters the Ork, who has found his homeland. The Scarecrow attempts to depose Krewl and is captured, with Googly-Goo suggesting the Scarecrow be burned, but then the Ork arrives with fifty others who attack the Jinxlanders and turn the tables on Krewl. The victorious party then arrives at Blinkie’s and makes her undo her magic on Cap'n Bill and Princess Gloria by using a magic powder to shrink her in size. When she has undone her evil spells, the Scarecrow stops Blinkie's shrinking, but she remains at a small size and loses all her magic powers. Gloria takes the throne of Jinxland and elevates Pon to be her royal consort, and the Scarecrow, Button-Bright, Cap'n Bill, Trot, and the Orks return to the Emerald City for a celebration.

The Screwtape Letters

fantasy

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons in the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from devils' viewpoints. Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts as a mentor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter. In the body of the thirty-one letters which make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin in the Patient, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Wormwood and Screwtape live in a peculiarly morally reversed world, where individual benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending God's love for man or acknowledging true human virtue when he sees it. Versions of the letters were originally published weekly in the Anglican periodical The Guardian between May and November 1941, and the standard edition contains an introduction explaining how the author chose to write his story. Lewis wrote the sequel Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1959, a critique of certain trends in public education (state schooling). An omnibus edition with a new preface by Lewis was published by Bles in 1961 and MacMillan in 1962. The Screwtape Letters is one of Lewis' most popular works, although he claimed that it was "not fun" to write, and "resolved never to write another 'Letter'." Both The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast have been released on both audio cassette and CD, with narration by John Cleese and Joss Ackland. A dramatized audio version by Focus on the Family was a 2010 Audie Award finalist.

Moving Pictures

fantasy

The alchemists of the Discworld have invented moving pictures. Many hopefuls are drawn by the siren call of Holy Wood, home of the fledgling "clicks" industry – among them Victor Tugelbend ("Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."), a dropout from Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University and Theda "Ginger" Withel, a girl "from a little town you never ever heard of", who become stars, and the Discworld's most infamous salesman, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, who introduces commerce to the equation and becomes a successful producer. Meanwhile, it gradually becomes clear that the production of movies is having a deleterious effect on the structure of reality. Ginger is possessed by an unspecified entity and she and Victor find an ancient, hidden cinema, complete with portal to the Dungeon Dimensions. Back in Ankh-Morpork, a creature from the Dungeon Dimensions breaks through, and Victor fights it, having found out that with a camera pointing at him in real life works out the way it does in the movies.

Downbelow Station

fantasy

Space is explored not by short-sighted governments, but by the Earth Company, a private corporation which becomes enormously wealthy and powerful as a result. Nine star systems are found to lack planets suitable for colonization, so space stations are built in orbit instead, stepping-stones for further exploration. Then, Pell's World is found to be not only habitable, but already populated by the gentle, sentient (if technologically backward) Hisa. Pell Station is built. The planet is nicknamed "Downbelow" by the stationers, who also start to call their home "Downbelow Station". When Earth's out-of-touch policies cause it to begin losing control of its more distant stations and worlds, it builds a fleet of fifty military carriers, the Earth Company Fleet, to enforce its will. This leads to the prolonged Company War with the breakaway Union, based at Cyteen, another hospitable world. Caught in between are the stationers and the merchanters who man the freighters that maintain interstellar trade. Set in the final days of the war, Downbelow Station opens with Earth Company Captain Signy Mallory and her warship, Norway, escorting a ragtag fleet fleeing from Russell's and Mariner Stations to Pell. Similar convoys arrive from other stations destroyed or lost to Union, leading to an enormous crisis. The flood of unexpected refugees strains station resources. Angelo Konstantin, Stationmaster of Pell, and his two sons, Damon and Emilio, struggle to cope with the situation. Fearing Union infiltrators and saboteurs, Pell dumps all the refugees in a Quarantine Zone, causing massive dislocations of Pell's own citizens. While conferring with Pell's administrators, Mallory encounters a delegation from the Earth Company, led by Segust Ayres, Second Secretary of Earth's Security Council. Offended by her brusque, arrogant manner, Ayres declines her offer of transportation to the front and charters a freighter instead. Unbeknownst to Mallory, Ayres' mission is to open peace negotiations with Union. Mallory also drops off a Union prisoner of war, Josh Talley, whom she had rescued from a brutal interrogation by panicked security forces at Russell's. However, on the voyage to Pell, her sexual exploitation of him had been only marginally less abusive. Faced with indefinite confinement on Pell, Talley requests Adjustment, the wiping of much of his memory, in return for his freedom. When questioned by Damon Konstantin, he requests Adjustment to escape the indefinite imprisonment, so Konstantin reluctantly gives his permission. Upon later review of his file, Damon learns that Talley had already undergone the treatment once before at Russell's, Still feeling guilty for agreeing, he and his wife Elene Quen befriend the post-Adjustment Talley, an act of kindness that will have monumental, unforeseen consequences. Jon Lukas, Angelo Konstantin's brother-in-law and only rival for power, is worried about the course of the war. The Fleet has received little or no support from an indifferent Earth and is gradually losing a war of attrition. He secretly contacts Union, offering to hand Pell over. Union responds by smuggling in a secret agent named Jessad. Meanwhile, the last ten surviving Fleet ships gather for the most critical operation of the war. All of Mazian's recent strategic maneuvers and raids have been leading up to this point. If they can take out Viking Station in one coordinated strike before their enemy's growing numerical superiority can overwhelm them, there would be a wide, barren region between Earth and Union space, one which would make further conflict vastly more costly for Union. Seb Azov, the Union military commander, has no choice but to gather his forces at Viking to await Mazian's anticipated attack. However, he has an ace up his sleeve. He has pressured Ayres into recording a message ordering Mazian to break off while peace is being negotiated. When Mazian strikes, Ayres' broadcasted order does indeed force him to abort and the Fleet retreats to Pell in confusion. Mazian meets with his captains and gives them the choice of accepting a peace treaty that essentially concedes victory to Union or rebelling against Earth and continuing to fight. They all remain loyal to their leader. One of Mazian's first acts is to place Pell under martial law. The Fleet is now forced to defend Downbelow Station, its only reliable base and supply source. Union forces attack and destroy two ships out on patrol. While Union suffers casualties as well, it can replace its losses, unlike Mazian. Counting one carrier lost earlier in the debacle at Viking, he has just seven ships left. Under cover of the panic on the station caused by the battle in space, Lukas makes his move, killing and supplanting his hated rival, Angelo Konstantin. To escape rioting refugees, Elene Quen is forced to board Finity's End, one of the most respected merchanter ships. The freighters flee the battle zone, but Quen convinces most of them to band together, for safety and to maximize their leverage whatever happens. Damon survives his uncle's assassination attempt and links up with Talley. Together, they manage to hide from Lukas; in fact, Talley discovers he is surprisingly good at it. Eventually, they are contacted by Jessad, and Talley finds out why. He and Jessad are the same kind: azi, artificially bred and, in Jessad and Talley's case, trained especially for espionage and sabotage. They are discovered by Fleet marines; Jessad is killed, while Konstantin and Talley are captured and taken to Mallory. She receives orders from Mazian to quietly dispose of Konstantin. Lukas does the Fleet's bidding with far less scruples, so Konstantin is superfluous, even dangerous. Mazian is preparing to disable and abandon Downbelow Station. He has another goal in mind: to take over Earth itself in a surprise coup d'etat. The wrecking of Pell would create a firebreak with Union, playing the role he had originally intended for Viking. Mallory has different ideas. Mazian has gone too far for her to stomach. She abruptly undocks from Pell and deserts. Mallory finds the Union forces and persuades Azov to unleash them against her former comrades. Talley is instrumental in convincing Azov of Mallory's truthfulness. Mazian can't afford a costly fight, so the Fleet sets off for Earth prematurely. Azov needs to pursue him, but is unwilling to leave Norway intact behind him. The tense standoff is broken by a timely arrival; Quen returns with the united merchanter fleet and claims Pell for the newborn Merchanter's Alliance, with Norway as its militia. Without the authority to deal with this new development and unwilling to fight the merchanters, Azov leaves to deal with Mazian. The end of the Company War is at last in sight, much to the relief of the Konstantins, the merchanters and the residents of Downbelow Station.

The Dragon's Apprentice

fantasy

The novel opens in 1943, seven years after the end of the previous book, The Shadow Dragons. It has been seven years since either of the three Caretakers has been in the Archipelago of Dreams and the Summer Country is embroiled in World War II. The Caretakers return and are faced with an issue: the Keep of Time has finally disintegrated and as a result, time has unravelled. Rose has a strange visitor in the night instructing her to find Samaranth's apprentice, ask the dragon a riddle and save the Archipelago from the Echthroi, the primordial shadows. The Caretakers are trapped in the Archipelago because of the final destruction of the Keep of Time, and when John, Jack and Charles return to the Summer Country in 1943, the Nameless Isles are ripped apart from the Archipelago and Tamerlane House, along with all of its inhabitants, are transported to 1945 and are now attached to Oxford. The Caretakers Emeritis meet a distraught John and Jack and learn that Charles died two weeks earlier. John, Jack, Fred, the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), Laura Glue, Richard Burton, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and the mysterious End of Time, a friend of Burton's, travel to Avalon and the Archipelago but discover that it is in ruins and that two thousand years have passed in the Archipelago of Dreams. At Paralon, they meet a little boy named Coal, the last of Arthur's descendents, and the group of animals protecting him. From Aven, the daughter of H.G. Wells, they learn of what has happened over the last two thousand years. As the dark star Rao approaches, they go through a door from the Keep of Time; the same one that was given to Madoc. They find themselves in Dickensian London. With no Caretakers in London at the time, the Caretakers and company are alone in London with a cohort of animals and a six-year-old boy from the future. However, they meet a young man named Edmund McGee after he stole the 'Geographica' from them. He leads them to his master, Benjamin Franklin. By persuading Mordred, or Madoc, to continue his apprenticeship to Samaranth and become a dragon himself, and by using Edmund McGee's prodigious skill in cartography and chronology to navigate their way through time, the Caretakers begin the process of fixing Time.

Star by Star

fantasy

In this dark and dangerous time for the New Republic, the cruel Yuuzhan Vong continue their mission: galactic conquest. The Yuuzhan Vong have begun cloning voxyn, creatures capable of hunting Jedi through the Force and killing them. Former Chief of State Leia Organa Solo faces a difficult crisis; the Yuuzhan Vong want to know the location of the secret Jedi base, and if the New Republic does not provide this information within one week, they will violently destroy millions of refugee ships. As the Jedi Knights mourn the victims of the voxyn, Anakin Solo prepares a dangerous plan. He will lead a strike force made of his Force-adept friends into the core of an enemy worldship over Myrkr in attempt to kill the original voxyn. There, he will come into contact with evil, sorrow, the destiny of the New Republic ... and himself. The book also saw the creation of the deadly YVH 1 Droids that were built as a response to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion and the Fall of Coruscant. The Jedi find themselves in considerable danger when the Yuuzhan Vong unleash feral creatures called voxyn on them. These voxyn are aggressive, intelligent, and extremely difficult to kill, and worst of all for the Jedi, they can hunt through the Force and have been engineered specifically to hunt down Jedi. Leia Organa Solo captures one such beast but not before she is severely wounded. It is then discovered that all voxyn are clones of an original genetically modified beast native to Myrkr, the location of the Yuuzhan Vong voxyn cloning facility. In order to foil the threat posed by the voxyn, Anakin Solo and the Jedi Council consider sending a specialized all-Jedi strike team to take out the cloning facility. The idea faced some resistance, mainly from Han Solo who rightly believed that the mission was dangerous and was unwilling to send all three of his children right into Yuuzhan Vong territory. Ultimately, the choice was Luke Skywalker's, who is currently leading the Jedi, who thought that it was their only chance and volunteered himself for the mission. Anakin rejected his offer on the grounds that he was too valuable to the New Republic and the Jedi, as well as being too important and strong for the Yuuzhan Vong to consider taking alive. Instead, Anakin volunteers himself and others follow his lead. The final group comprises Anakin, Ulaha Kore, Jacen Solo, Jaina Solo, Tenel Ka Djo, Zekk, Tahiri Veila and Alema Rar among others. While the initial part of the mission went smoothly, things began to get out of hand once the team landed on the worldship orbiting Myrkr. While they were there, they were repeatedly ambushed by voxyn and Yuuzhan Vong warriors commanded by Nom Anor and Vergere. They also ran into Nightsister Lomi Plo and her Shadow Academy apprentice Welk. After some debate, Anakin decided that Lomi Plo and Welk should join them, although Zekk predicted that they would be double-crossed by the Dark Jedi. There were several casualties along the way to the original or 'queen' voxyn, but the biggest blow fell when Anakin was injured. Already weary and injured, the Jedi soon came under attack once again and although they escaped, the damage to Anakin had already been done. They soon learned that Welk and Lomi Plo had made off with the spacecraft Anakin had intended to use for their getaway, taking with them Raynar Thul, an old friend of Jaina and Jacen. This effectively means that the group are stranded aboard the worldship with a worsening Anakin. Anakin soon realized that his condition would result in the entire group's death. He died later fighting off many Yuuzhan Vong, destroying all of the voxyn cloning samples, and buying the time his comrades needed in order to escape the Yuuzhan Vong. His death was felt by his uncle Luke Skywalker and his mother Leia Solo, the former noting that before his death, Anakin had already become one with the Force. Before his death, he left his brother Jacen in charge of their group. After a brief period of mourning during which tensions within the group rose, Jacen and Jaina decided to split up. Jaina wanted to retrieve her brother's body while Jacen decided to finish off their original mission; the killing of the voxyn queen. On his way there, he met the mysterious Vergere who showed him the way to the voxyn queen whom he fought and defeated. After this, she turned on him and delivered him right into the waiting hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. Jaina, meanwhile, had successfully retrieved her brother's body and reluctantly led what was left of their group off of the Myrkr worldship via a stolen Vong frigate, leaving Jacen behind with the Yuuzhan Vong. Before her departure, she had already begun to show signs of dark side tendencies that rose from the loss of Anakin. The Yuuzhan Vong warfleet attacked Coruscant from the OboRin Comet Cluster, having assembled at such staging positions like Borleias. They used refugee ships containing prisoners from earlier battles to shield the Vong fleet. Even with the efforts of legendary leaders such as General Garm Bel Iblis (commanding Fleet Group Two), Admiral Traest Kre'fey (commanding Fleet Group One), General Wedge Antilles (commanding Fleet Group Three), Supreme Commander Sien Sovv, and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, the Yuuzhan Vong were too plentiful to be thwarted. It was said that the Vong fleet numbered "tens of thousands", and that half of the New Republic space navy was present. Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya made Admiral Sovv command the battle in front of a full session of the Senate. As a result, the New Republic forces had no effective overall strategy, and discipline broke down. When Sovv ordered that the fleet hold their fire in order to not hit the refugee ships, Iblis flat out ignored him, and his Fleet Group operated solely under his command for the rest of the battle attacking the Yuuzhan Vong head on and suffering enormous casualties. The refugee ships, which were piloted by Yuuzhan Vong, were deliberately smashed into Coruscant's shields to weaken them. This tactic worked, as eventually whole shield-grids failed, and the surface shield-generators exploded. Coruscant did have extensive mine fields, but these didn't have quite as large an impact as desired—the defenders at Coruscant disabled the mines to avoid slaughtering the refugees. The Vong also used the refugee ships to batter the city planet's surface, causing terrible damage below. Even the orbital defense platforms could not stop the advance of the Yuuzhan Vong. Soon Coruscant's skyline was burning with crashing vessels and plasma fire from the battle above. Even Orbital Defense Headquarters was crippled, and fell out of orbit to the surface. During the battle, Luke Skywalker and other Jedi from the Eclipse base targeted the enemy war coordinating yammosks, and managed to destroy four of them. Meanwhile, Han and Leia Solo, aboard the Millennium Falcon, attempted to rescue Chief of State Borsk Fey'lya, but were tasked with rescuing Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker. The second assault wave were thousands of yorik-trema dropships, tsik-seru airskimmers, swarms of yorik-vec assault cruisers and coralskippers, rakamat and fire breather walkers, legions of Yuuzhan Vong warriors and Chazrach support troops. In desperation, the New Republic military fired on the hostage refugee ships but to no avail. At the Imperial Palace, Tsavong Lah's aide Romm Zqar tried to force Borsk Fey'lya to surrender. When he refused, he was killed. But before the Chief of State died, he had planted a bomb in the Imperial Palace triggered by his heartbeat. This resulted in the deaths of the Chief of State, 25,000 Yuuzhan Vong warriors, the destruction of a portion of the Imperial Palace, many surrounding buildings, and several Yuuzhan Vong vessels. Prior to his death, Fey'lya had ordered the data towers to be destroyed to prevent valuable information from getting into the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong. The battle lasted for several days with heavy casualties on both sides. Many of its citizens were forced to flee the former capital world of the New Republic while those who did not manage to escape were forced to flee into the city-planet's lower levels. Many Senators, fearing for their lives, commandeered bits of the fleet and escaped to their sectors as the battle progressed. The New Republic navy was somewhat diminished as a result. Some think that if this had not happened, then the New Republic might have won the battle. The third wave was a biotoxin in the form of green algae released by the Yuuzhan Von which devoured many of the buildings, including dead bodies, and the algae also left behind black spots. Coralskipper and yorik-vec squadrons bombed the devastated city world causing damage to the defenders. The Yuuzhan Vong eventually captured Coruscant and had it terraformed and renamed Yuuzhan'tar after their primordial homeworld. Overall, the Yuuzhan Vong won because of their utter ruthlessness.

The Magical Monarch of Mo

fantasy

Chapter One has no plot, but rather is a basic description of the Land of Mo, or "The Beautiful Valley". It explains that everyone in Mo is happy, and that the people never need to work, because everything they could desire grows on the trees, including items such as clothes. In A New Wonderland, the author mentions planning to move there himself, but this was omitted from subsequent editions. Chapter Two: The Monarch of Mo goes to fight the Purple Dragon, which has just eaten all of the caramels in the land. The Dragon bites off his head, and the King is forced to go home headless. The King tries to make the best of it, but the Queen complains that she cannot kiss him anymore, so he issues an edict saying that whoever can make him a new head will get to marry one of the princesses. After two failures, a durable head is made out of wood by a wood-chopper. The Purple Dragon finds the wood-chopper and bites his head off, replacing it with the King's head. When the wood-chopper appears in court, he switches heads with the King, so that the King has his own head again and the wood-chopper has a wooden head he made. The King then tries to fulfill his promise, but the princesses refuse to marry a wooden-headed man. The wood-chopper then confronts the Purple Dragon, who tries its head-biting technique again, only to get its teeth stuck in the wooden head, thus letting the wood-chopper get his own head back so he can marry a princess. Chapter Three: The Monarch meets a dog, who is a curiosity because there are no dogs in Mo. However, his majesty loses his temper and ends up kicking the dog who literally gets bent out of shape until he resumes his natural form again. Chapter Four: Prince Zingle, the oldest Prince, is upset because the King will not let him milk the Ice-Cream Cow. Urged by the Purple Dragon, Zingle pushes his father down a large hole so he will become the King. The Monarch escapes from the hole and punishes Zingle by abandoning him on the Fruit Cake Island on the Rootbeer River, an island made of fruit cake. After a while, Prince Zingle gets such a furious stomachache from eating nothing but fruit cake that he repents. Chapter Five: The King celebrates his birthday (which he does several times a year) by throwing a huge celebration, during which he entertains everyone with items from a magical casket. Everyone goes ice-skating on a lake of sugar-syrup. The sugar cracks and Princess Truella, Prince Jollikin and Nuphsed sink to the bottom. The King gets them out by fishing for them, baiting the line with a kiss for Truella and a laugh for Jollikin. But when it comes to getting Nuphsed, no one knows what he likes best, so they consult the Wise Donkey. The Wise Donkey suggests that they use an apple, knowing that it won't work. When it doesn't work, the Wise Donkey eats the apple and tells them to use a kind word. They do, and it works. Chapter Six: King Scowleyow, who lives in a nearby country, hates the people of Mo, and has his people build a giant man out of cast-iron, designed to destroy Mo. They wind up the Cast-iron and he walks towards Mo, but trips on the dog. Prince Thinkabit figures out how to get rid of the Cast-iron Man: he tickles the Cast-iron man to get him on his back, then he pushes a pin in the Cast-iron Man to get him to stand up again, but now the Cast-iron Man is facing the other way, so he goes to King Scowleyow's kingdom and destroys it instead. The Cast-iron man eventually gets stuck in the mud at the bottom of the ocean and is never heard from again. Chapter Seven: A boy named Timtom falls in love with Princess Pattycake, the most beautiful princess, who unfortunately has a bad temper and tries to beat anyone who talks to her. He journeys to see the Sorceress Maëtta to get her help, and along the way, he meets three animals, who agree to help him in return for gifts from Maëtta. Timtom gets a pill for getting rid of Pattycake's temper and the gifts for the animals, but they are stolen by a Sly Fox. Timtom manages to recover the gifts, thus pleasing the animals. He then goes to Pattycake and feeds her the pill. She loses her temper and then agrees to marry him. Chapter Eight: A horrible monster called a gigaboo comes to Mo and starts destroying things. Prince Jollikin fights the gigaboo, and has his head, arms and legs cut off. Prince Jollikin manages to put himself back together, although at first he could only find his legs and head. He then saves the day by killing the gigaboo. Chapter Nine: There is an evil wizard in Mo who is a midget and very sensitive about his height, so he tries to make a potion to increase his height. One of the ingredients of the potion is the big toe of a princess, so he steals the toe from Princess Truella. Truella gives chase, overcoming the obstacles the Wizard throws at her, and eventually kills the Wizard and recovers her toe. Chapter Ten: The Duchess Bredenbutta falls asleep on her boat while it floats down the Rootbeer River, and so she gets too close to the waterfall at the end of the river and falls down. She ends up in Turvyland, where everything is opposite of the way it should be. With some help from a local named Upsydoun, she manages to get back to her home. Chapter Eleven: The King's animal crackers, which are real animals, fight amongst each other, putting the King in a bad mood, so when Prince Fiddlecumdoo asks to leave Mo, the King consents, although it is a bad idea. Prince Fiddlecumdoo leaves and meets a friendly giant named Hartilaf. Hartilaf's wife accidentally runs the prince through a clothes-wringer, and Prince Fiddlecumdoo returns home, completely flat. They use an air pump to get him back to normal. Chapter Twelve: Prince Zingle builds a large kite, which flies into the air, taking Zingle with it, eventually landing in the Land of the Civilized Monkeys, where monkeys act like humans. The monkeys do not speak English (but rather, they speak Monkey) and have never seen a human before, so they think Zingle is a dangerous animal and lock him in the zoo, where all of the monkeys come to see him, including two professors who believe that Zingle may be the missing link. Prince Zingle manages to escape and get back home. Chapter Thirteen: The King's plum-pudding has been stolen, so he asks his wise men who did it. The wise men blame the fox, who is captured. The fox explains that he did not do it, as he was busy curing his family's sore throats by taking out the throats and turning them inside-out, then drying them in the sun. The wise men then blame the bullfrog, who is also captured. The bullfrog explains that he did not do it, as he and his wife were busy trying to save their tadpoles, who were eaten by a large fish. The wise men then blame the Yellow Hen, who is also captured. She explains that she did not do it, as her last batch of eggs accidentally produced a Hawk, not a chicken, and the Hawk took her away to a different country, and she spent the last nine days returning to Mo. The King, furious at the wise men for being wrong three times, has them put into a meat-grinder, so that they are mixed into one wise man, who tells the King that the Purple Dragon stole the plum-pudding. Chapter Fourteen: The King holds a council of war to try to figure out how to destroy the Purple Dragon. They decide that the dragon cannot be destroyed, but at least they could rip out its teeth and make it harmless. They build a giant pair of forceps and clamp it to one of the Purple Dragon's teeth. The Purple Dragon winds its tail around a pillar to avoid being pulled by the people. As it turns out, his tooth cannot be removed, even though the men run to the other side of the valley; instead, the Purple Dragon is stretched all the way across the valley, so that it is no thicker than a fiddle-string. Prince Fiddlecumdoo cuts the Purple Dragon into fiddle-strings, and so the Valley of Mo is freed from its worst enemy.

A Fortress of Grey Ice

fantasy

A Fortress of Grey Ice represents a greater division of storylines than was present in the first book. The novel opens rather dramatically with new characters and settings, then moves quickly to Ash March's abrupt and covert departure from Raif in order to join the Sull. Left with the Listener, Raif finds himself alone, now abandoned by clan and friend, cut off from everyone and everything that he loves. Embittered and resentful of the lore that claims him as Watcher of the Dead, Raif will wander the edge of the Want until he finds the only group willing to accept an outcast and renegade, the outlaw Maimed Men. Elsewhere Ash, already leagues away from Raif, will become initiated into the mysterious blood lettings of the Sull, all the while riding in haste to reach the safety of the Sull lands, guarded by her two Far Riders and pursued by the maeraith she has been unintentionally released.

The Little Grey Men

fantasy

The last four gnomes in Great Britain live beside Folly Brook in Warwickshire; they are named after the flowers Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry. After Cloudberry goes exploring one day and does not return, the others make the tremendous decision to build a boat and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey, set against the background of the English countryside, beginning in spring, continuing through summer, and concluding in autumn, when the first frosts are starting to arrive.

Inkspell

fantasy

A year has passed, and Meggie now lives in Elinor's house along with Darius and her parents, Mo and Resa. Life is peaceful, but not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of Inkheart and the characters that came to life. For the fire-eater Dustfinger, the need to return to his homeworld has become urgent. When he finds a crooked storyteller named Orpheus who has the same ability to bring stories to life as Mo, he asks him to read him back. Orpheus obliges, but doesn't send Dustfinger's apprentice, Farid, back into the book as they arranged; he then steals the book from the boy and hands it over to Basta, who wants revenge for the death of his master Capricorn. Dustfinger, now in the Inkworld, regrets the fact that Farid didn't come back with him but doesn't suspect that Orpheus intended it that way. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. Soon after the two youths are in the book, Mortola, Basta, Orpheus, and a "man built like a wardrobe" barge into Elinor's house, and take Mo, Resa, Elinor, and Darius prisoner. As per Mortola's orders, Orpheus reads Basta, Mortola, and Mo into Inkheart, but Resa comes with them by accident by getting hold of Mo. Mortola has brought along a rifle from our world, and shoots Mortimer. Resa discovers that her voice has come back to her only as she cries for her husband, praying for him to survive the wound. Resa and Mo are hiding in a secret cave with the strolling players (known also as Motley Folk) while he recovers, but they soon discover (or erroneously assume) that the injured Mo is the mysterious gentleman-robber, the "Bluejay", a fictitious hero created by Fenoglio's words made into song for the Motley Folk to sing. Fenoglio has been living within his own story since the events of Inkheart, working as a court scribe in Lombrica's capital city of Ombra, and once reunited with Meggie he asks her to read Cosimo the Fair back into the story, since he died a death the author never planned for him. Meggie doesn't feel right to interfere with the story so much but is soon convinced by Fenoglio as it will be 'a double' of Cosimo - not Cosimo himself. Reluctantly Meggie agrees to read the words when Adderheads soldier's barge into the fair and injure and kill many people by riding horses over them, but soon regrets it when she realises that it has gone wrong. Cosimo has none of his doubles memories and doesn't seem to love his wife and child anymore. Instead he 'spends his nights' with Dustfinger and Roxanne's daughter Brianna. Violante begs Fenoglio to convince Roxanne to deal with Brianna and tell her not to upset Violante's marriage. Fenoglio attempts this but fails, a mixture of Roxanne's reluctance to tell her daughter what to do and Roxanne's distracting beauty. Fenoglio thinks that Roxanne is 'too beautiful' for Dustfinger. Cosimo's return upsets the Adderhead, ruler of the neighboring region of Argenta, whom planned to take over Lombrica once the Laughing Prince died. With the rightful heir to the throne of Ombra mysteriously brought back to life, but with no memories of 'his own' life, a war is imminent. Mo and Resa are captured by the Adderhead's men along with many other strolling players in the cave, sold out by one of their own. Meggie, who had also been able to read a few of Fenoglio's words to aid her father in recuperating, joins Dustfinger and Farid in searching for her parents and the strolling players. Along with the Black Prince, de facto leader of the Motley Folk, they launch a successful rescue mission, but Mo is unable to escape because of his wound and Resa stays behind with him. Meggie goes willingly into the Adderhead's Castle of Night and, fulfilling a prophecy she and Fenoglio dreamed up and "read" into reality, offers him a bargain: Mo, a great bookbinder rather than the robber they believe him to be, will bind the Adderhead a book of immortality if he lets Meggie, Resa, Mo, and the rest of the strolling players he has captured go free. What they neglect to tell the Prince of Argenta is that if three words are written in the book ("Heart", "Spell", and "Death", referencing the titles of the books), the person who signed his name in the book to gain immortality will die instantly. However, his lieutenant Firefox, disbelieving of the entire concept from the beginning, is chosen to test it. Firefox is made immortal, surviving a fatal stabbing without suffering any consequences, but then Taddeo, the Adderhead's librarian, kills him by writing the three words in the book. Satisfied that the book works, the words are all erased and replaced by the Adderhead's name, consequently making the Adderhead invincible. Mo picks up Firefox's sword as they leave and claims it as his own, feeling a strange coldness within him; he believes his anger and sadness at the events thus far are changing him into a different person. The Adderhead decided, as celebration for his wife giving birth to a healthy son to release all of the prisoners from his cells, but the Black Prince suspects that he instead plans to sell the prisoners into slavery. Together the robbers plan to free the prisoners, during the raid in which Basta leads, Mo learns to fight and kill and, Unfortunately Basta kills Farid, with a knife thrown at his back (The death Fenoglio had originally planned for Dustfinger) Basta is then killed himself by Mo. Later while mourning Farids death, Dustfinger asks Meggie if she too would like to have Farid back. When Meggie agrees sends her to Roxanne to tell her "he will always find his way back to her". Roxanne realizes what Dustfinger plans to do and runs to him, she is too late however and watches as the White Women, (the Inkworld's Angels of Death) take Dustfinger. Farid is then brought back to life in Dustfinger's place and the story ends with Meggie reading Orpheus to the Inkworld so as to resurrect Dustfinger. Orpheus convinces Farid to become his servant in saying that it will help him bring Dustfinger back to life sooner.

The Rapture

fantasy

In the moments leading up to the Rapture, nobody knows it is coming as the clock silently ticks down. Choices are made. The stage is set as Nicolae Carpathia ruthlessly eliminates any obstacles in his rise to power. Time seems to slow as the clock ticks down. Pan-Con Airlines Captain Rayford Steele prepares for a flight to London with beautiful flight attendant Hattie Durham. Because of his wife's newfound faith, Rayford looks forward to time–and the possibilities–with Hattie. Journalist Cameron "Buck" Williams is in Israel when the Russians attack, and he experiences for himself the power of God when fire rains down from the sky, destroying the attackers. Even more, not a single casualty is reported in all of Israel. Buck cannot deny Chicago bureau chief Lucinda Washington's insistence that the event was prophesied in Ezekiel 38,39 and clearly of the supernatural, though he dares not consider the personal ramifications. Meanwhile, Nicolae Carpathia eliminates any obstacles in his path to power. As the newly appointed president of Romania, Nicolae is invited to speak before the U.N. Without warning, millions disappear and are welcomed into the unspeakable presence of Jesus Christ, and believers from all over space and time reunite in the house of God, as prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. The Judgment Seat of Christ takes place and the saints of the ages are rewarded for their perseverance with crowns from Christ himself. They are followed into heaven, where they see the glory prepared for them by the Lord. On Earth, some realize what has happened, what they’ve lost, what they’ve missed, as the world plunges into chaos as drivers, pilots, and pedestrians of all occupations go missing. Rayford's first officer, Chris Smith, is among the first to commit suicide in the wake of the disappearances and the ensuing chaos. Pastor Bruce Barnes is among those left behind, and the young pastor knows all too well that the disappearances signal the beginning of the end and the darkest days the planet will ever see.

The Neverending Story

fantasy

The book centers on a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is neglected by his father (who has sunken into despair after his wife's death) and is bullied by his schoolmates. Whilst running from some of them, Bastian bursts into the antique book store of Carl Conrad Coreander. Bastian steals a book from the store called The Neverending Story which Coreander has been reading; he hides in his school's attic, where he proceeds to read the story through the rest of the day and the night, not realizing that he has effectively become a part of it. After a while of reading he is magically transfixed and is brought into the book. The book begins in Fantastica, when a "will-o'-the-wisp" goes to ask the Childlike Empress for help against the Nothing, which is spreading over the land. The Empress is ill, which is believed to be the cause of the Nothing (or vice versa); she sends the only person that can stop the Nothing, a boy warrior named Atreyu, to find a cure for her. Atreyu is a brave person, being considered a warrior even though he is a young boy of Bastian's age. While on his quest, Atreyu meets characters such as Morla the Aged One, the incorporeal oracle Uyulala, and the gnomes Urgl and Engywook. Atreyu also meets Falkor, the luckdragon, who helps him along the way. After Atreyu and Falkor get in the way of a fight of the Wind Giants, Atreyu gets thrown off Falkor's back and ends up in Spook City, Atreyu meets Gmork the werewolf, who has been following Atreyu since the early days of his quest, intending to kill him. In the course of his quest, Atreyu learns about the true nature of Fantastica and the Nothing: Fantastica is a representation of the dreams and fantasies of the real world; the Nothing and the sickness of the Childlike Empress are the effects of the lies humans use in their greed for power; it is the denial of dreams and fantasy which is destroying Fantastica. The only thing that can save Fantastica is a human child, who must give the Childlike Empress a new name to start again the cycle of life in Fantastica. Falkor and Atreyu return to the Ivory Tower, where the Childlike Empress lives. But since Bastian, in his lack of confidence, hesitates to take the step into Fantastica, the Childlike Empress confronts him with the fact that whatever he may think, he has already become part of the Neverending Story, and he must carry out his part in it. And Bastian does so by crying out the name he has chosen for the Empress: 'Moonchild'. Bastian comes to Fantastica and meets the Empress; she asks him to help re-build Fantastica with his imagination, and he subsequently has many adventures of his own in his new world. With the help of AURYN, a medallion that links him to the Empress, that gives him power over all the inhabitants of Fantastica and grants all of the boy's wishes, Bastian explores the Desert of Colors, battles the evil witch Xayide, and meets the three Deep Thinkers. Bastian and Atreyu become friends. However, due to Bastian's continuous wishing with the The Gem - which costs a memory each time - he begins to lose his true self, to wit, Atreyu becomes increasingly more worried about him. Xayide exploits the growing tension between the two, driving Bastian to a lust for power and eventually having himself crowned as Childlike Emperor. Atreyu leads a rebellion against Bastian, but narrowly escapes with his life. Upon pursuing Atreyu, Bastian stumbled on a colony of humans who were trapped in Fantastica - having lost all their memories as they had recklessly indulged in the power of Auryn - and realizes what has nearly become of himself. Bastian sets out to find the only thing he can wish for without losing himself: his own true wish. After Bastian loses his remaining memories, he is aided by Atreyu in fulfilling his one true wish, and manages to cure his father at the same time. After returning from Fantastica, he decides to return the book to its rightful owner, Carl Conrad Coreander, but the book has gone missing upon his return to the human world. However, Mr. Coreander reveals he has also been to Fantastica once, and the two readily agree to see each other soon and talk about their respective experiences. But as Coreander surmises, this is not the true end of the story, as Bastian is now likely to lead others onto their way to Fantastica in order to preserve both worlds.

Maia

fantasy

Maia, at 15, lives in the Beklan Empire's province of Tonilda with her mother Morca, her three younger sisters, and her stepfather, Tharrin. Their small, poor farm is on the edge of Lake Serrelind, and Maia tends to shirk her chores by swimming in the lake all day. Although Morca is pregnant with Tharrin's child, he secretly seduces Maia. When Morca discovers the affair, she is doubly embittered and sells Maia to agents of the slave-dealer Lalloc. Maia is almost raped by Genshed, one of Lalloc's employees but is saved by Occula, a black slave girl. Maia and Occula become very good friends and even lovers. To avoid debasement by being bundled in with a detachment of more ordinary slaves, Occula enlists Maia in frightening their captors with apparent supernatural powers. The two girls are sent to the city of Bekla. Occula relates her own past: her father, a jewel-merchant, brought her across the desert to Bekla. They were received by Fornis, a noblewoman whom a coup would shortly elevate to the priestess-like status of "Sacred Queen". Fornis had Occula's father murdered and his emeralds incorporated into the Sacred Queen's crown. Occula was to be killed as well, but the household steward saw a chance to profit by selling the girl as a slave; since then, she has been employed in prostitution. Adams outlines Bekla's political situation in several chapters that bypass Maia. The "Leopard" faction led by the High Baron Durakkon, Fornis, the Lord General Kembri, and the High Counsellor Sencho came to power by ceding Suba, a western province, to the neighboring kingdom of Terekenalt. They legalized slavery, and the capital's finances are now heavily based on taxation of it, including farms for breeding slaves as well as the enslavement of freeborn people such as Maia and Occula. The Beklan army's central authority has largely withdrawn from the provinces unless paid to come enforce the law. Pockets of rebellion have sprung up around the empire. High Counsellor Sencho is the spymaster of the Beklan Empire. He buys both Maia and Occula as "bed-slaves". Terebinthia, the woman in charge of Sencho's household, supervises and trains them. At intervals, a peddler named Zirek visits and exchanges cryptic conversations with Occula. Beautiful, young, and fun-loving, Maia shows promise of going far, and finds some professional satisfaction in providing Sencho's decadent pleasures. She is even surprised that she enjoys the spectacle when a fellow bed-slave, the tempestuous Meris, is whipped and sold for dereliction of duty. Terebinthia rents out the girls to other rich and powerful men. Using this means of contact, Lord General Kembri secretly enlists Maia and Occula as agents and charges Maia with gaining the trust of Bayub-Otal, the dispossessed heir to Suba and a potential ally of the rebels. Bayub-Otal is the son of a dancer nicknamed "Nokomis" ("dragonfly") and the baron of a neighboring province, whose jealous wife arranged Nokomis' death when Bayub-Otal was a boy. When Sencho becomes drastically ill, he comes to depend almost solely on Occula's intense caretaking. During a garden party, Occula lures Sencho out of sight of everyone else and signals her rebel confederates (by implication Zirek and Meris) to stab Sencho to death. Maia and Occula are imprisoned in the Great Temple on suspicion of colluding in Sencho's murder. Queen Fornis takes Maia from the temple priests. As Maia fails to satisfy her sexual needs, Fornis gives her to Kembri; Maia seizes on this chance to interest the queen in Occula, hoping to save her friend from execution. Kembri sends Maia to Bayub-Otal with a cover story of having escaped from the temple. Bayub-Otal takes her with him as he secretly makes his way back to Suba. Maia learns that one reason for his extraordinary standoffish respect for her is that she looks (and dances) like his dead mother, Nokomis, who is still revered throughout the province. Bayub-Otal hopes to use the resemblance to rally Suban patriotism on behalf of an alliance with Terekenalt. At the rallying site, Maia falls passionately in love with the handsome young Zen-Kurel, an officer of Terekenalt. Zen-Kurel accepts her invitation to bed, but leaves quickly because of a surprise attack scheduled for that very night. The River Valderra, the boundary between the two countries, is thought to be uncrossably swift and rocky, but the Terekenalters plan to ford it with heavy ropes and strong men, thus surprising the detachment of Tonildan soldiers guarding the other side. In hopes of saving her fellow Tonildans' lives as well as her lover's, Maia swims the river by herself. Despite serious wounds, she warns the Beklan commander and thwarts the Terekenalter and Suban invasion. Maia returns to Bekla, freed and celebrated as the luck of the city, a great heroine whom the soldiers vote a house, money, and property. She gains an informal title as the "Serrelinda" after Lake Serrelind. Hoping to reunite with Zen-Kurel, she takes no lovers, despite expectations that she will find a rich husband or become an expensive courtesan. Her popularity and single status bring her under threat from Fornis, who is resisting pressure to retire as Sacred Queen; since the position is filled by popular acclaim, Maia is an obvious rival despite not wanting the crown. Maia sees her stepfather, Tharrin, dragged into Bekla as a rebel informant. He is condemned to be sacrificed by the Queen. Maia does her best to free him, but Fornis foils her plan and causes his death. However, during Tharrin's last conversation with Maia, he reveals to her that Morca had not been her real mother. A pregnant girl had fled to Morca's cottage and died there in childbirth; Maia deduces she is the daughter of Nokomis' younger sister. In grief at Tharrin's death, Maia makes a desperate attempt to kill Fornis, but is thwarted by Occula, who was indeed inducted into the queen's household. Occula intends to take her own revenge on Fornis when the time is right; meanwhile she is performing the sort of sado-masochistic services of which Maia had been incapable and which show how deranged Fornis can be. As civil war breaks out in the city, Maia learns that Anda-Nokomis and Zen-Kurel have been brought to Bekla as prisoners. In flight from Fornis' murderous fury, Maia frees the two men, and with them and Zirek and Meris (who have been hiding since assassinating Sencho), she flees Bekla. The former prisoners are bitterly angry at Maia for betraying them at the Valderra, which she had idealistically considered an attempt to save their lives. Nevertheless, they agree to return with her to Suba or Terekenalt. Maia and her companions recover on a remote farm, then travel for a time with rebel freebooters. Meris, always a troublemaker, gets herself killed by one of them. Maia gradually regains Zen-Kurel's and Anda-Nokomis' trust by her sincere efforts to help them. After an arduous boat escape from the Beklan Empire to Terekenalt, Anda-Nokomis is killed and Maia receives a marriage proposal from the man she loves most. Two years later, Maia (with her little son) visits the capital of her new country and by chance meets Occula. Occula describes at length how she killed Fornis, aided by supernatural forces. She tells Maia that the rebels succeeded in overthrowing the Leopards' regime. The story ends with Maia refusing Occula's plea to go back to Bekla; she would rather help Zen-Kurel and his father manage their farm.

The High Lord

fantasy

A year has passed since Sonea had challenged Regin to a public duel and she beat Regin by one bout. Since that victory, she has finally won the respect she deserves, not only as a novice with exceptional power, but also the High Lord's favorite. But even with this new respect, she still has one challenge left to face: Akkarin. Still unable to shake off the memory she has after the duel, she continues to avoid Akkarin. Ceryni, Sonea's old friend, now has a powerful position with the Thieves. He has a task which he must perform which could cost him his life. But that task is not a secret. A strange woman, called Savara, with great skill knows of this task and wishes to help Cery, however he will not accept her aid as he does not trust her. Akkarin surprises Sonea by showing her a book, which is an autobiography of Coren, a famous architect. This book reveals that Coren himself had discovered and no doubt used black magic. Sonea is amazed at this knowledge but is suspicious why he has shown this information to her. Akkarin is pleased that Sonea has read the book and gives her another one which is nearly 500 years old. From reading it, Sonea discovers that many centuries ago black magic was referred to as 'higher magic.' The book tells of a novice who desired power and used the higher magic to obtain more power by killing many magicians and absorbing their power. The Guild, in the end, suffered greatly from confronting the novice. They decided to store the knowledge of higher magic and rename it black magic. They sealed the knowledge, hoping that no one would take advantage of that power, but only use it in the greatest need and the knowledge was hidden in a secret passage of the University. The author also tells of a threat from Sachaka, that the Sachakans will have vengeance for losing an ancient war. Only the Head of Warriors knew of this secret weapon, however the knowledge was later lost. As Sonea starts to absorb this new information, Akkarin takes her into the city in disguise. Sonea realises that the Thieves are in on a secret with Akkarin as they use their 'private road.' Sonea and Akkarin come to a room face to face with a captured Sachakan slave who was sent to see how weak the Guild was. Akkarin starts to search the man, and finds a gold tooth with a red gem inside it; the gem is a blood gem, used by their masters to see and hear what the holder sees, hears and does. Akkarin then tells Sonea that he will teach her to read a mind of an unwilling person. Struggling at first, Sonea discovers the name of the Sachakan. She also discovers that Akkarin was a slave. Amazed and shocked, Sonea starts seeing memories of a group called the Ichani, powerful magicians that have been labeled as outcasts by the Sachakan King. Sonea is then taken outside while Akkarin stays inside and kills the man using black magic. Back at the Guild, Sonea starts to question everything she knows and has been told. She misses a class, instead finding solitude at a stream in the forest, a secret place that Dorrien had shown her. To her surprise, she is met by Akkarin as it was also where Akkarin and Lorlen used to go when they were young. Akkarin begins telling Sonea about his past, about how he entered Sachaka and was captured by an Ichani named Dakova who easily overpowered Akkarin. Whilst in servitude, Akkarin and his fellow slaves, all latent magicians, constantly had their power absorbed by Dakova. For five years, Akkarin was a magical source of energy for Dakova, but everything changed when Dakova was attacked by a fellow Ichani. Though Dakova won, he was left weak. He borrowed slaves from his brother Kariko. After some time Dakova found a previous enemy of his and decides to kill him. Upon arriving at an abandoned mine, the floor gives way and Akkarin falls down, only to be saved by another Ichani. The Ichani made a deal with Akkarin to spare his life if he killed Dakova, Akkarin agrees and is taught black magic by the Ichani. Akkarin headed back with wine laced with a sleeping drug. While Dakova drank the wine, Akkarin then killed the slaves, but when he came to Takan he could not take his dormant power because they had helped each other at times of need. When he came to Dakova, he took his power as quickly as possible, killing him in the process. With the deed done and now free, Akkarin then started his long journey home without food thinking he would die on the journey back to the guild but Takan followed him with a supply of food and drink and became Akkarin's servant. Sonea wondered why he had told her and asks him, his only answer is that someone else needs to know. As the gong strikes Akkarin ends the tale and tells Sonea to get back to her classes. Meanwhile Lord Dannyl has been instructed by Akkarin to infiltrate a group of Elyne nobles, led by a powerful Dem, attempting to illicitly learn magic. Having managed to enter the Dem's circle of trust by having them learn the "false secret" of his relation with Tayend, he begins teaching Farand, a young man whose powers have been unleashed but who has not learnt Control. Slowly, Dannyl gains more trust from the Dem. When Dannyl enters Farand's mind, he realises the Elyne King used Farand for eavesdropping. Farand had overheard the King order a political assassination, because of this Farand was prevented from joining the Guild by the King. Back at the Guild, Sonea is unable to sleep. She is continuously replaying what Akkarin had told her, and wondering why he told her. She even starts to believe that black magic isn't necessarily evil, only the wielder of the magic can determine that. She starts to wonder what would happen if Akkarin was to die and no one would be able to carry on the secret struggle with the Sachakan spies. She decides to tell Akkarin that she wants to learn black magic. The next day when Sonea tells Akkarin that she wants to learn, he refuses, he starts to change her mind saying that if she is caught, she will be executed. However her mind is made up, Akkarin refuses but says that he has another use for Sonea. He informs her that, if she was willing, she can be a source of power for him. He says he will only teach her black magic if the Ichani invade Kyralia. Even though she isn't helping in the way she thought she would, she is still pleased to assist Akkarin. Lord Dannyl visits Farand once more to assure everyone that he has learnt Control. When in Farand's mind, Dannyl starts questioning him. Before Dannyl can get any answers, Farand is aware of what Dannyl is doing and breaks the connection. Revealing him as a traitor, Farand tells everyone that more magicians are on their way, but don't know Dannyl's location. However Dannyl informs the group of rebels that that won't be the case. Farand perceives Dannyl's and the other magician's conversation and agrees with him. The other nobles are apprehended, Farand and the Dem surrender. At night, Sonea is worried about Akkarin, since he is not back for hunting the latest spy. (This is the first indication that, where she shortly before hated Akkarin and wanted him dead, now she starts to be positively concerned for him.) Once he returns, Sonea realises that the fight must have been terrible, and that Akkarin lost. She and Takan follow him to his bedroom and Akkarin starts filling in the details about the new spy. Akkarin believes that this new spy is another slave, but Takan tells Akkarin that she must be an Ichani, as she is cunning and strong. Takan once again tells Akkarin to teach Sonea black magic for help in case he dies, Akkarin finally agrees that he will teach Sonea tomorrow night. Cery is surprised that Akkarin lost to the latest spy, and vows to find her again. Savara enters Cery's room saying that if Cery had trusted her, she could have dealt with the new spy, unlike Akkarin. Savara then continues, saying that she knows the spy and wishes revenge for a past act. However she realises that now that Akkarin knows about the new spy, she cannot intervene without revealing herself, something she does not wish to do. Cery promises that she can hunt the next spy. The next day, while Lorlen and Lord Sarrin discuss building plans, Lord Osen informs them that there has been a massacre last night, a magician and his family have been murdered. All the victims had shallow cuts, which weren't fatal wounds. Osen also reports that there was a major battle between some unknown magicians. Lorlen decides that someone should go to the location of the fight and see if it had been magical. At night, Sonea makes her way to the underground passage to start her training in black magic. Akkarin informs Sonea that all living things have a natural barrier. With black magic, the idea is to break the barrier and draw their magical power from them. Sonea, under Akkarin's instructions, starts to learn how to take power, with Takan as her source. Once she is done, she heals him and is given some more books on black magic to read. While heading back to Imardin, Dannyl and Farand start talking about the future, and what consequences he and the other rebels would have to face. Realising that he is tired, Dannyl tells Farand to get some sleep, as he starts to leave Dannyl notices that Farand's lips are blue and comes to the conclusion that he has been poisoned. Dannyl then calls on Lady Vinara using telepathy, she informs him of how to purge the poison. Dannyl barricades the door to prevent anyone stopping him from healing Farand. Akkarin takes Sonea to show her how to defeat the spies, the Thieves inform them of where she is but when they reach her rooms she is not there. They look around, hearing footsteps Sonea hides in an alcove. The spy enters and talks to Akkarin before they start attacking one another. The spy moves closer to the alcove and Sonea tries to stay hidden, the combat is causing damage to be building and Sonea is forced to use her shield. She finds a ring in the alcove, one worn by an elder of a noble house. A heavy blow is struck and the alcove collapses, however Sonea creates a hollow with her shield, she then realises the spy is not a slave but a powerful Ichani. A hole is formed as the hollow begins to collapse, Sonea then sees that the Ichani is moving backwards and will soon detect her. Sonea drops her shield and the Ichani's passes over her undetected, she then slashes the Ichani's neck with a piece of wood and drains her power, killing the woman. Akkarin and Sonea then return to the Guild. The Magicians Guild have learned that Akkarin and Sonea are using black magic and believe they may be responsible for the murders. They are tried and convicted of using forbidden magic, but not of the murders. Akkarin is sentenced to exile in Sachaka, Sonea is allowed to remain but refuses saying that, if alone, Akkarin will be killed. Unsure about Akkarin's explanation of an imminent Ichani invasion they are both exiled. Akkarin and Sonea are forced to hide in the wastes of Sachaka where they are pursued by a pair of Ichani but manage to elude them. Meanwhile the Ichani invade Kyralia, easily overcoming the (reinforced) border defenses and slaughtering over twenty Guild magicians. They then advance on the capital Imardin, but are slowed by an ambush. It seems that only Akkarin and Sonea will be able to hold back the Ichani invasion as the Guild magicians are no match for them. Whilst in Sachaka, Sonea develops feelings for Akkarin, but tries to hide them. However Sonea awakes Akkarin from a nightmare and accidentally senses his feelings for her - seeing herself through his eyes, she sees a far more beautiful and alluring woman than she ever saw when looking in the mirror. Akkarin is hesitant because he argues he is 13 years older than Sonea, but Sonea doesn't seem to care. They kiss, and later sleep together. As eventually comes out, Akkarin's recurring nightmare was about a woman fellow slave, with whom he had been in love during his captivity in Sachaka, and whose death he witnessed and was unable to prevent. Finding a new love with Sonea lays this ghost, and Akkarin ceases to have such nightmares. The two then return to the borders of Kyralia where they encounter Dorrien, who isn't too happy to see them there, he escorts them back to the border but they are ambushed by one of the Ichani (called Parika), who is eventually killed by Sonea using Healing Magic, and Akkarin drains his energy. The Ichani have no knowledge of Healing Magic, and are surprised when Sonea heals a cut in fron of them. The three return to Dorrien's small home and discuss possible plans, they seem to decide one. Whereby Sonea and Akkarin will secretly return to Imardin, their city. Akkarin and Sonea return to Imardin and enlist the aid of the Thieves, including Cery, Sonea's old friend and slum dwellers in fighting the Ichani who now roam the city searching for victims to strengthen them. Sonea and Akkarin search the slum dwells for any magical potential and take it to strengthen their power, however, unlike the Ichani, they do not kill their helpers. The night before, Cery gives Akkarin and Sonea some changes of clothes, including full length, black, magician robes. Sonea and Akkarin are able to pick off many of the Ichani one by one, while another is killed with the help of Regin, Sonea's old Novice enemy. One Ichani is then killed by the Thieves and another by the Guild. Eventually only three Ichani remain. But Lorlen is badly wounded, and tells Akkarin that he understands why he did what he did, he asks if Sonea is ok, and then he dies and Akkarin takes his ring. Unfortunately, the three Ichani left have been absorbing the magic from various magically constructed buildings, and increasing in strength. Before the remaining Ichani can absorb the magic held in the Guild buildings (including the Arena, which has masses of power around it), Akkarin and Sonea force the three into a final battle at the Guild. A climactic battle ensues and the Ichani begin to tire. However, the lead Ichani, Kariko, lays a trap and a knife springs out of the ground and stabs Akkarin through the chest. As Akkarin is unable to fight, he persuades Sonea to make use of and channel his energy to supplement her dwindling reserves and with that combination of force, Sonea manages to destroy the last three Ichani. However, in doing so, all of Akkarin's life force is absorbed by Sonea, and he dies. 'He had given her too much power. He had given her everything.' Sonea deeply grieves for him and becomes extremely depressed, locking herself in her old room at Rothen's lodgings and losing the will to live - totally exhausted, physically and emotionally, and though never having been formally married to him, feels herself very much as Akkarin's widow. Whilst Dannyl and Tayend, his assistant and lover, return to Elyne, the Higher Magicians debate about whom to appoint to various positions in the Guild and appoint Rothen as the Head of Alchemic Studies. Lord Osen will probably replace the late Lord Lorlen. Lord Balkan is expected to replace Akkarin. The Higher Magicians are reconciled to the need to have a recognised Black Magician, since otherwise the Guild and the country would be completely helpless before further invasions - and Sonea is the only possible candidate, since it seems the books left behind by Akkarin do not provide enough information on how to do it. At first they intend to impose on her the condition of not being allowed to leave the Guild premises. However, arguing against that restriction, Rothen explains to them that she joined the guild in order to help the poor, and they reconsider. They rule that if she is to venture out beyond the guild premises, she must be accompanied by an escort, and she must not venture beyond the city slums in which she seeks to aid the poor. In a matter of months the Guild builds a hospital for the slums, a reversal of the long-standing discriminatory policy whereby the Healing magic was only available to the Aristocratic Houses. Though Sonea has done only three years of training out of the five required of a novice, it is obviously out of the question to treat her as anything but a full-fledged magician; instead, Dorrien (who is still in love with her) and Lady Vinara volunteer, and are formally assigned, to complete Sonea's training as a Healer. She is also to wear black robes from then on, and the High Lord is to wear white. In the final scene, Sonea spots her Aunt in the queue at the slum hospital with a baby in her arms and tells Rothen to call her over in the office. Her Aunt tells her what the problem is and Sonea gives her the prescriptions for the baby's fever. Sonea then hesitantly tries to explain to her Aunt that she would like her to come live in the guild with Sonea because she is in need of her help. At first, Sonea's aunt is confused, as is Rothen, but when Sonea taps her belly, Sonea's Aunt understands and they make explanations to Rothen. Sonea is fearful; she is carrying Akkarin's baby and didn't plan for it to happen. Sonea's Aunt smiles and soothingly assures her that she will indeed look after her, at least for a while, to help guide and prepare her for what is to come. As already disclosed by the writer, Sonea would give birth to a son named Lorkin, who is a major character in the sequel "The Ambassador's Mission".

The Court of the Air

fantasy

When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder, he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws, and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends.

Sylvie and Bruno

fantasy

There are two strands: *the conspiracy against the Warden of Outland, instigated by the Sub-Warden and Chancellor, and *the love of a young doctor, Arthur, for Lady Muriel ;Chapter 1: The narrator finds himself in a high room overlooking a public square filled with people. The room is the Warden's breakfast-saloon. The Chancellor has organised a "spontaneous" demonstration (by a rent-a-mob which seems to be confused about whether to chant "More bread, less taxes" or "Less bread, more taxes"). Bruno enters briefly, looking for Sylvie. The Chancellor delivers a speech. The narrator follows Bruno into the study, where he climbs on to the Warden's knee, next to Sylvie. The Warden tells them that the Professor has finally returned from his long wanderings in search of health. They set off for the Library, where the Professor tells them about his concerns with the barometer and with "horizontal weather". The Professor then leads the children back to the saloon. ;Chapter 2: The narrator finds himself in a train compartment, which a veiled young lady has just entered. He is on his way to see Arthur, a doctor friend, for a consultation; he rereads Arthur's letter, and absent-mindedly repeats out loud its last line, "Do you believe in Fate?" The lady laughs, and a conversation ensues. The scene changes abruptly to the breakfast-saloon, in which the Professor is explaining his plunge-bath invention to the Sub-Warden, his wife, her son, the Chancellor, Warden, Sylvie, and Bruno. ;Chapter 3: The Chancellor tries to persuade the Warden to elevate the Sub-Warden to Vice-Warden. The Warden asks the Sub-Warden for a private talk. The Sub-Warden's wife asks the Professor about his Lecture, suggesting a Fancy Dress Ball. He gives Sylvie a birthday present: a pincushion. Uggug throws butter over Sylvie. The Sub-Warden distracts his wife by saying a pig is in the garden; the Chancellor drags Uggug out by his ear. ;Chapter 4: The Warden agrees to the changes. After he has signed the Agreement and left (to become Monarch of Fairyland), the Chancellor, Vice-Warden and his wife laugh about how they have deceived him, the document having been altered at the last minute to give the Vice-Warden dictatorial powers. A beggar appears beneath the window; Uggug and his mother throw water over him. Bruno tries to throw him some food, but he has gone. ;Chapter 5: The narrator wakes up, and he and the lady discuss ghosts. They change trains at Fayfield Junction; he notices her name on her luggage: Lady Muriel Orme. An old tramp is sent on his way. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the first stanza of the Mad Gardener's Song. The Gardener directs Sylvie and Bruno after the beggar. They give him cake, and he leads them to an underground octagonal room lined with creepers bearing fruit and flowers. His clothes transform, and they find it is their father. ;Chapter 6: He says they are in Elfland. Bruno tries to eat the fruit (Phlizz) but it has no taste. Their father shows Sylvie two lockets, one blue ("All will love Sylvie") and one red ("Sylvie will love all"). She chooses the red. The narrator finds himself at the railway station of his destination, Elveston. On arriving at Arthur's house, he tells him of Lady Muriel Orme, and it turns out that Arthur knows her and is in love with her. The narrator falls asleep again, and hears the Chancellor warn the Vice-Warden that the Ambassador of Elfland has arrived and that they will need to convince him that Uggug is Bruno, or as able as Bruno. ;Chapter 7: The Ambassador, Baron Doppelgeist, is given demonstrations of Uggug's abilities which always happen when he is looking the other way. Finding his guestroom full of frogs, he leaves in anger. ;Chapter 8: The narrator visits Lady Muriel and her father, the Earl, in the company of Arthur. They discuss weightlessness. Later, Arthur and the narrator visit the beach. Arthur goes home. Sylvie and Bruno go in search of the Beggar, their father. She rubs the red amulet, and a mouse is transformed into a lion, which they ride. Their father listens to their account of the Ambassador's visit; he cannot rectify the situation, but casts a spell. ;Chapter 9: Uggug refuses to learn his lessons. The Vice-Warden and his wife try on disguises: jester and dancing bear. Uggug sees them and runs off to fetch the Professor. When he arrives, they are dressed normally, and they tell him that the people wish to elect an Emperor—the Vice-Warden. ;Chapter 10: The Professor takes Sylvie and Bruno to see the Other Professor. The Professor asks him about the Pig-Tale, which he promised to give after the Professor's Lecture. Bruno asks what "inconvenient" means. ;Chapter 11: By way of illustration, the Other Professor recites Peter and Paul, 208 lines of verse. ;Chapter 12: After a discussion, the Other Professor vanishes. Sylvie and Bruno complain to the Professor about their treatment, and ask him to tell the Gardener to open the garden door for them, so they can go to Fairyland to see their father. ;Chapter 13: They walk a long way, stopping briefly to visit the King of Dogland, before entering the gate of Fairyland. Arthur tells the narrator that he has discovered that he has more wealth than he thought, and that marriage with Lady Muriel is at least possible. ;Chapter 14: The narrator spends a month at London; when he returns, he finds that Arthur has still not yet declared his intentions. The narrator sets off to speak to the Earl; on the way he encounters first Sylvie (who is helping a Beetle) and then Bruno (who is spoiling Sylvie's garden). He persuades Bruno to help weed it instead. ;Chapter 15: Bruno weeds the garden with the narrator's help. ;Chapter 16: The Earl invites Arthur to a picnic in ten days' time. On the day, walking to their house, the narrator encounters Sylvie and Bruno again. ;Chapter 17: The party leave the Earl's Hall and travel to a ruined castle, the site of the picnic. Muriel sings, but the narrator falls asleep, and her song becomes that of Bruno. ;Chapter 18: Muriel introduces Captain Eric Lindon, a highly presentable young man. Arthur is in despair, and declines to return with the party in the same carriage. The narrator falls asleep again, and there is a meeting between Lindon, Sylvie, Bruno, and the Professor. ;Chapter 19: A week later, Arthur and the narrator go to church. They discuss religion with Muriel, condemning High Church affectations, and moralising which relies on Pascal's Wager. The narrator helps carry a lame little girl upstairs at the railway station, and buys a posy in the street. The girl turns out to be Sylvie. ;Chapter 20: He brings Sylvie and Bruno to the Earl's Hall. The Earl is astonished by the flowers, none of which are English. Muriel sings a new song. A couple of days later, the flowers have vanished. The narrator, Muriel, and the Earl idly sketch an alternative scheme for the animal kingdom. ;Chapter 21: Sylvie asks the Professor for advice. He unlocks the Ivory Door for the two of them, and they meet Bruno. The Professor boasts of having devised the Emperor's new Money Act, doubling the value of every coin to make everyone twice as rich, and shows the narrator an "Outlandish" watch (essentially a kind of time machine). Sylvie finds a dead hare, and is horrified to learn that human beings hunt them. ;Chapter 22: Arthur is even more discouraged. Muriel is surprised to discover that Eric has met Sylvie and Bruno. Eric saves Bruno from being run down by a train. ;Chapter 23: The narrator tries to use the Outlandish watch to prevent an accident, but fails. He then uses it to witness, in reverse, some scenes of family life. Later, the narrator is talking to the Earl when he learns, and Arthur overhears, that Muriel is engaged to Eric. ;Chapter 24: Sylvie and Bruno present a variety show to an audience of frogs, including "Bits of Shakespeare", and Bruno tells them a long rambling story. ;Chapter 25: A week after discovering that Muriel is engaged, Arthur and the narrator go for the "last" time to the Earl's Hall. They discuss with Muriel how the Sabbath should best be kept, and the nature of free will. Arthur informs the narrator that he is leaving for India. ;Chapter 1: Several weeks pass in London. The narrator sees Eric Lindon at a club, and learns that Eric's engagement to Muriel is over, and that Arthur is still at Elveston. The narrator meets Bruno in a park; Sylvie gives Bruno his lessons. A thunderstorm drives the narrator home, where he finds a telegram from Arthur, asking him to come. ;Chapter 2: As before, the narrator meets Lady Muriel while changing trains at Fayfield Junction. She is giving money to the old tramp (vol. 1, ch. 5). On their way to Elveston she says that Eric broke off their engagement because of her evident discomfort with Eric's lukewarm faith. Arthur does not know this. ;Chapter 3: The next morning, on a walk, Arthur discusses his anti-socialist views, and condemns charity bazaars as "half charity, half self-pleasing". Sylvie and Bruno contrive that he should meet Muriel, who is also out walking. ;Chapter 4: The narrator presses on without him to Hunter's farm to order milk. On his way he meets the farmer, who is talking to a woman about her hard-drinking husband, Willie. At the farm, the dog Nero (who is the Dog King from vol. 1, ch. 13) catches a boy who is stealing apples. ;Chapter 5: The three of them meet the farmer's wife, daughter Bessie, and Bessie's doll, Matilda-Jane. On their way back to Elveston they pass the Golden Lion, a new public house. ;Chapter 6: Willie comes walking down the road; Sylvie and Bruno invisibly drag him away from the pub. He delivers his wages to his wife, and swears off drink. The narrator walks back to the house, and learns that Arthur is now engaged to Muriel. ;Chapter 7: At the Hall, the narrator finds Muriel with a man called "Mein Herr," who has a beard and a German accent. He bears a remarkable resemblance to the Professor. He shows them Fortunatus's Purse, and describes a gravity-powered train, a method of storing up extra time so that nobody ever gets bored, a carriage with oval wheels (with the end of one wheel corresponding to the side of the wheel opposite it, so that the carriage rises, falls, rolls, and pitches, and so anybody in the carriage gets vomitingly sick) He also describes a carriage designed to prevent runaway horses from getting anywhere. Oddly enough, nobody seems to remember where they first met "Mein Herr", nor what his real name is, nor where he lives, nor where he's from. Lady Muriel admits that she never realized what a mysterious man he is until she met the narrator. A party is planned. ;Chapter 8: Ten days pass. The day before the party, Arthur, Muriel and the narrator have tea at the Hall. Arthur argues that the gravity of a sin must be judged by the temptation preceding it. The Earl returns from the harbour-town with news of the spread of a fever. ;Chapter 9: At the party, conversation ranges over sanity and insanity, cheating at croquet versus cheating at whist, rational honeymoons, teetotalism, and keeping dinner parties interesting. ;Chapter 10: An interlude, with the arrival of Sylvie and Bruno, the discussion of wine (which is transformed into a discussion of jam) and an unsatisfying musical performance. ;Chapter 11: Another interlude, with "Mein Herr" telling tall tales about his country. He describes how nobody in his kingdom ever drowns, because they have been eugenically bred for dozens of generations to weigh less and less until everybody is lighter than water. He also hears about how the largest map ever made on Earth was six inches to the mile; as his country is older, it has gone through maps that are six feet to the mile, then six yards to the mile, next a hundred yards to the mile---finally, a mile to the mile (the farmers said that if such a map was to be spread out, it would block out the sun and crops would fail, so the project was abandoned). He goes on to portray some devices similar to modern planetary engineering or terraforming, and paint-balls. Finally, he describes a system of government where there are thousands of kings and one subject, instead of the other way around. ;Chapter 12: Sylvie plays the piano for the assembled company. Mein Herr discusses incomprehensibility by describing how, in the days when he worked at a school in his country, there was an old professor who lectured to pupils, and, although his speeches were incomprehensible, the pupils were so impressed that they memorized the speeches. Many of these pupils got jobs as lecturers in schools, and repeated the speeches made by the first professor, and the pupils were impressed by the speeches and memorized them, getting jobs as lecturers in schools later on, until a day came when everyone realized that nobody understood what the speeches meant. Another craze was that of competitive examinations, when teachers motivated students by giving them money if the answers are correct, until eventually, the bright students in school make more money than the teachers do. The most insane craze was the Scholarship Hunts, when any principal that wanted a student in his college had to hunt them in the streets and the first principal to catch the student wins. One principal, theorizing how bullets have accelerated velocity because they're spherical, becomes perfectly spherical, in an attempt to catch the brightest scholar. Unfortunately, the Principal runs too fast and soon finds himself going at 100 MPH and only stops after he crashes into a haybale. It is implied that if he hadn't deliberately run into a haybale, he would have run off the planet. ;Chapter 13: A continuation of the Scholar Hunters story of chapter 12. Mein Herr explains how the Scholarship Hunts evolves into a more 'civilized' method of catching scholars; the children are offered more and more money for a scholarship in an event that amounts to auctioning them off. One day, a linguist finds an old African Legend (although the nature of the story appears to be stereotypically Ottoman) in which a village that stands in the heart of Africa is inhabited by people for whom a beverage made for eggs is a necessity. A merchant arrives at the town with eggs and auctions them off for large blocks of money, as the natives very badly need their eggs. He returns each week with eggs, pricing them higher, and the natives end up giving him fortunes for the eggs, until one day, when they realize how they are letting the merchant get rich off of their gullibility, and cheat the system by having only one man (who requests 10 piastres for the whole cartload) appear at the next auction. The principals realize how they are having the same problems with their students that the Africans had with the eggs, and this system is abolished. Mein Herr's speech is interrupted for the narrator by stanzas of What Tottles Meant. ;Chapters 14-15: Sylvie tells the story "Bruno's Picnic". ;Chapter 16: Sylvie and Bruno have vanished. The guests, after a brief search, go home; Muriel, Arthur and the Earl discuss what pursuits might be followed in the Afterlife. ;Chapter 17: Muriel sings To a Lark (which is replaced, for the dreaming narrator, by a different song). Arthur is called away to the harbour to treat cases of the deadly fever, and he leaves immediately after his wedding the next morning. ;Chapter 18: An item in the Fayfield Chronicle reports the death of Arthur Forester. ;Chapter 19: In December of the same year, the narrator returns to Elveston, and visits Arthur's grave in the company of Muriel. They have tea with the Earl, and discuss whether animals have souls. Lady Muriel walks the narrator part of the way home, and they meet Sylvie and Bruno, who are singing A Song of Love. ;Chapter 20: Back in Outland, the Professor welcomes Sylvie and Bruno back to the palace in time for Uggug's birthday celebrations. They hear the last verse of the Gardener's Song, then hurry to the Saloon. ;Chapter 21: The Professor delivers his Lecture. It includes Axioms, Specimens, and Experiments. Part of the Specimens involve shrinking an elephant to the size of a mouse with the use of a Megaloscope, and reversing the Megaloscope to enlarge a flea to the size of a horse. One experiment involves the subject of Black Light by taking a candle and pouring black ink over the flame and turning the flame's yellow light to black light, which admittedly looks no different than no light at all. ;Chapter 22: (The narrator visits the tramp mentioned in vol. 2, ch. 2.) The Banquet takes place. ;Chapter 23: The Other Professor recites The Pig-Tale. The Emperor is in the process of making a speech when a mysterious "hurricane" causes him and his wife to regret all of their previous intrigues against the Warden. (No attempt is made to justify this in the terms of the story.) ;Chapter 24: The Beggar returns to the palace, and is revealed to be the Warden. Uggug, who has turned into a giant porcupine, is put into a cage. Sylvie and Bruno visit the ill Professor in the company of the Empress. ;Chapter 25: In the "real" world, the narrator is called urgently to the Hall. Eric Lindon has found Arthur Forester still living—he had been unconscious or delirious for several months, and went unrecognised as the doctor. On returning to his own lodgings, the narrator witnesses his last scene from Outland: Bruno and Sylvie discover that the two Jewels (vol. 1, ch. 6) are in fact one.

The Pearls of Lutra

fantasy

When gathering herbs near the quarry in Mossflower Woods, the young Redwallers Tansy and Arven come across a mysterious skeleton among the rocks. They are disoriented in a rainstorm and after failing to return to the abbey before the breaking of the storm are rescued by Martin II. Tansy quickly leads curious Redwallers back to the quarry to examine the mysterious skeleton, and along the way, they meet two travelers: the irrepressible hare Cleckstarr Lepus Montisle and his owl friend Gerul. Meanwhile, far across the western sea on the tropical isle of Sampetra, trouble is brewing. Ublaz Mad-Eyes, a large, sinewy pine marten with a hypnotic stare, gathers an army of barbaric monitor lizards and trident wielding searats. The stoat captain Conva is sent out to retrieve the Tears of All Oceans, six perfectly spherical rose-pink pearls, but after murdering the Holt Lutra who owned the pearls, the Tears are stolen by the weasel Graylunk, who flees into Mossflower Woods. Conva tracks him to Redwall Abbey, where Graylunk takes refuge, before returning to Sampetra. Ublaz is not pleased and murders Conva. He then sends out an elite force of monitor lizards, headed by their general Lask Frildur, to Mossflower to retrieve the pearls. They are escorted by the ferret captain Romsca and her crew. However, the daughter of the Lutra chieftain is not dead. Far away on the western shores, Grath Longfletch, a strong female otter, was at the gates of the Dark Forest before being found by a pair of bankvoles, who nurse her back to health. The otter fashions a powerful bow and a quiver of green-fletched arrows, with which she planned on wreaking her revenge. She eliminates a longboat-crew of searats and then takes their boat southward into Mossflower, where she hopes to find the corsairs that slew her family. Presently, Conva's brother Barranca discovers that Ublaz has killed his brother, and he begins hatching a plan to overthrow the pine marten and take the island for himself. With the fearsome Lask and his lizards gone to Mossflower, Barranca decides to seize his chance. Back at Redwall, the old bankvole recorder Rollo determines that the skeleton in the quarry was Graylunk. He had become gravely injured in a fight with the weasel Flairnose, whom he killed, over the pearls before seeking safety at Redwall. There he befriended an old squirrel called Sister Fermald before he went off to die in the woods. Fermald, a clever, though senile old beast, had expertly hidden the pearls throughout the abbey before passing away several seasons ago. Tansy and Rollo, along with the hedgehog maid's friends Craklyn the squirrel and Piknim the mouse, begin a search for the six exquisite pearls. The Dibbun Arven and his two partners in crime, the moles Diggum and Gurrbowl, occasionally help in the search. When Abbot Durral takes young Viola Bankvole for a stroll in Mossflower Woods, they are captured by Lask and his troops. Lask binds the Abbot and the bankvole and attempts to ransom them for the pearls at Redwall. However, the pearls have not yet been found, and Lask and his lizards take the two Redwallers back to their ship to be captives at Sampetra. Martin, Clecky, Gerul, and the Skipper of Otters pursue the lizards through Mossflower, slaying several but failing to rescue the captives. Gerul and Skipper become wounded and are sent back to the Abbey, but the others chase the lizards to the western shore. There, they meet up with Grath Longfletch, who had caught sight of Romsca's ship, the Waveworm, and attempted to pick off some of the vermin. Durral manages to help Viola get to safety on the shore, but the ship departs before he can escape. Viola is sent back to Redwall with two shrews to guide her, and Grath, Clecky, Martin, and the Log-a-Log's two sons use discarded vermin boats to form the Freebeast, a double-outrigger vessel in which they pursue Lask to Sampetra. Viola, who has sneaked aboard, also ends up coming along. On Sampetra, Barranca has been slain by Rasconza, a clever fox corsair who takes over the rebellion against Ublaz. Initial attempts at negotiation fail, due to the double-dealing of the pair, and when Ublaz tries to have Rasconza assassinated, Sampetra is plunged into all-out war. In the search for the six pearls, the Redwaller friends slowly but surely find them all, though not without paying the price. The young mouse Piknim ends up being slain by the cruel jackdaws at St. Ninian's while searching for a pearl. The church is burnt down to prevent evil-doers from ever using it again (it had been used as a base by Redwall's enemies twice before), and the quest resumes, with all the pearls eventually being found. Martin, Grath and their friends closely follow Romsca and Lask across the ocean, and end up meeting the otters of Holt Ruddaring along the way. Inbar Trueflight, a skilled archer, and the seal Hawm tag along on the quest. On the Waveworm, Durral is underfed and mistreated, but the ferret captain Romsca protects him from the fierce violence and hunger of Lask's cruel monitor lizards. Lask and Romsca, who had been at odds with one another since the beginning, finally battle on deck, with the forces of both being wiped out. Romsca ends up slaying Lask but is fatally injured in the process. Before dying, she gives the abbot instructions on how to set the rudder to fix the ship toward Sampetra. As the last living creature aboard the ship, the old Abbot sails alone toward the evil isle. When Martin, Clecky, Grath, Inbar, the shrews and Viola arrive on Sampetra, a battle ensues. Most of the monitor lizards and wave-vermin are killed, and Martin corners Ublaz alone in his palace. They duel it out, but Ublaz accidentally steps on the poisonous snake that he had hypnotized and kept as a pet. The snake bites him and he dies. Durral is rescued and the warriors all return to Mossflower. They leave the island of Sampetra with no timber for ship building to force the vermin to learn to live in harmony with each other. Grath stays with Inbar at Holt Ruddering, as the pair have fallen in love, but the others meet Tansy and her friends at the shore. The young hedgehog, realizing the pearls lead only to greed and violence and bring nothing but misery and death to all who own them, casts them out into the sea to be forever lost. For her hard work, perseverance and aptitude, Tansy is made Abbess of Redwall to succeed old Durral. She becomes the first non-mouse abbot/abbess.

Daja's Book

fantasy

The story opens with the four child-mages and their teachers at the end of a caravan. Rosethorn, Briar's teacher, stops to examine the tree-litter and while she does this, Daja catches a glimpse of a forest fire miles off. Tris, Briar, and Sandry all turn to look at the fire while Rosethorn asks their local guide when the last time was that they had a forest fire. However, their guide only laughs and says their mage, called Firetamer, takes care of all their fires, just like his father did. The caravan moves on, but Daja still has an uneasy feeling about the huge fire, noting how fire could be her friend and enemy. The caravan stops in a small town to study magic and assist the Duke of Emelan with the drought. As Daja is working in the smithy, a woman, a wirok, a scorned Trader who negotiates with lugsha, tradesmen, stops by to talk to the smith. As she notices the blank cap on Daja's Trader staff which signifies her exile status, the Trader refuses to talk to her. Moments later, Daja loses control of her magic because of her anger, putting energy into a clump of melted iron. Soon, it turns into a branch and the Trader is stunned. Throughout the book, Daja and the Trader converse in a bargain for the 'living metal'. All of the student's magic is so strongly combined that Sandry is forced to create a map of their magic, which she can use to separate their twined magic. Their teachers first noticed the mixed magic when Briar and Sandry used lightning by accident. While Daja is on her way to the privy, she releases a stream of hot water from within the earth, which spills out onto the stones before her. She and Briar investigate, finding that one of the hot springs leads to an area of ice/glaciers. Melting the water would refill the drying lake, saving one of the town's problems. They also discover a vein of copper which could be used to replenish the town's supply and stimulate trade. While all the teachers and students are at a watch tower, a huge fire erupts, utilizing all the mast that had built up in the years that Yarrun Firetamer had been suppressing all the fires. After the conceited fire tamer dies in an attempt to stop the fire, the rest of the people try to stop it. Daja is caught in the middle, though, and has to first convince the caravan she is riding with to listen to her, and then stop heading for the fire. She saves the caravan by thrusting all of the fire into a vein in the earth which leads to the glacier. Lastly, Daja creates a living metal leg with the copper which is now a part of her for the wirok, restoring the wirok's ability to work with horses, her original job. Daja is a trangshi, a Trader word which literally means "doesn't exist" or "bad luck." In the end, however, she becomes a Trader again because she had gained enough zokin, or honor, by saving the Tenth Caravan Idaram from the huge forest fire.

Space Cadet

fantasy

In 2075, teenager Matt Dodson applies to join the prestigious Space Patrol. After a number of physical, mental, and ethical tests, he is accepted as a cadet. He makes friends with fellow recruits William 'Tex' Jarman, Venus-born Oscar Jensen, and Pierre Armand from Ganymede. His first roommate is Girard Burke, the arrogant son of a wealthy spaceship builder. They are transported to the orbiting school ship PRS James Randolph for further training. Burke eventually either resigns or is asked to leave, and goes into the merchant service, but the remainder do well enough to be assigned to working Patrol ships. Dodson, Jarman and Jensen ship out on the Aes Triplex. Their first real mission is to help search for a missing research vessel, the Pathfinder, in the Asteroid Belt. They find it, but all aboard are dead, the unlucky victims of a fast-moving meteor that punctured the ship when the armored outer airlock door was open. Before the accident, a researcher on the Pathfinder had found evidence that the planet which blew up to form the asteroids was inhabited by an intelligent species, and that the explosion had been artificial. The captain of the Aes Triplex transfers half the crew to the repaired Pathfinder so that they can take the ship and the news of the startling discovery back to Earth quickly. With the remainder (including all three cadets), he continues his patrol. Then, he receives an urgent message to investigate an incident on Venus. He sends Lieutenant Thurlow and the cadets to the planet's surface. The lander touches down on a sinkhole, barely giving the crew enough time to get out before it disappears in the mud. With Thurlow comatose, injured when the lander fell over, Jensen assumes command. He contacts the sentient usually-friendly Venerians, but the entire party is taken captive. They soon find out why. These particular natives had never seen human beings before, until old classmate Burke showed up in a prospecting ship. He had taken the matriarch of the local clan hostage when she refused to give him permission to exploit a rich deposit of radioactive ores. The locals promptly attacked the ship and killed his crew; Burke managed to send a message for help before being taken prisoner. Jensen skillfully gains the matriarch's trust and convinces her that they are honorable and civilized, unlike Burke, and the Patrolmen are released. Neither the lander nor Burke's ship is flightworthy. To their amazement, she takes the stranded humans to the carefully preserved Astarte, the legendary first ship to set out for Venus over a century before and thought to have been lost en route. According to the log, the crew perished from disease. With the help of the natives, the cadets recommission the ship and fly it back to (human) civilization at Venus's South Pole colony. Dodson is initially disappointed when they are not treated as heroes—but then he realizes that what they accomplished was simply what was expected of Patrolmen.

Crown Duel

fantasy

Young Countess Meliara swears to her dying father that she and her brother will defend their people from the growing greed of the king. That promise leads them into a war for which they are ill-prepared, which threatens the very people they are trying to protect. But war is simple compared to what follows, in peacetime. Meliara is summoned to live at the royal palace, where friends and enemies look alike, and intrigue fills the dance halls and the drawing rooms. If she is to survive, Meliara must learn a whole new way of fighting-with wits and words and secret alliances. In war, at least, she knew in whom she could trust. Now she can trust no one

Chocolat

fantasy

The story begins as two strangers, Vianne Rocher, and her small daughter Anouk, move into the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. They are brought by 'the wind' during the last days of carnival, and they settle and open a chocolaterie, La Céleste Praline. The village priest, Francis Reynaud, is initially mystified, because Lent has just begun, but his confusion turns rapidly to anger when he understands that Vianne holds dangerous beliefs, does not obey the church, and "flouts" the unspoken rules that he feels should govern his "flock". Vianne, we learn from her personal thoughts, is a witch though she does not use the word. Her mother and she were wanderers, going from one city to another. Her mother strove to inspire the same need for freedom in her daughter, who is more social and passive. They were born with gifts, and used a kind of "domestic magic" to earn their living. Throughout her life, Vianne has been running from the "Black Man", a recurring motif in her mother's folklore. When her mother is killed by a cab, Vianne continues on her own, trying to evade the Black Man and the mysetrious force of the wind and settle down to a normal life. The chocolaterie is an old dream of hers. She has an innate talent for cooking and a charming personality. She tries to fit in and help her customers. She starts to build a group of regular customers, and, to Reynaud's dismay, she doesn't go out of business. Reynaud attempts to have Vianne run out of town, and he talks about her every Sunday at church. Some people initially stay away, but not for long. His conflict with her becomes his personal crusade. Vianne, however, announces a "Grand Festival of Chocolate", to be held on Easter Sunday.

Lammas Night

fantasy

Lammas Night tells the story of a group of English witches who act to save their country from Nazi attack during World War II. Woven within the story of their efforts are the visions and fragmented memories of one male witch, who gradually comes to realize his role in an ancient cycle of royal death, reincarnation, and sacrifice.