by A. Attanasio
• The Bright Worlds, numerous planets, including Irth, Nemora, and Hellsgate, that range through the brilliance surrounding the Abiding Star.
• The Dark Shore, cold, dim worlds, among them Earth, cast like shadows into the void by the radiance of the Bright Worlds: our universe congealed from light into planets, stars and galaxies.
Old Ric—a geriatric gnome from Nemora summoned by the Lady of the Garden to help determine what has gone awry that the unborn child in her womb has ceased to move; the gnome’s lifelong knowledge of the Bright Worlds and his awareness of the Dark Shore qualify him as an expert of the lady's magical creation.
Asofel—a luminous sentinel, known as a Radiant One, posted by his superiors to watch over the Lady of the Garden; the Lady has assigned him to accompany Old Ric on his quest through the Four Mystic Worlds to find out why the lady's child has ceased to thrive.
Broydo—a young elf from World's End, the Bright World closest to the Abiding Star, who befriends Old Ric and escorts him on his quest.
Smiddy Thea—grandmother of Broydo and leader of their elfen clan on World's End.
Tivel—fellow elf of Broydo and Smiddy Thea's clan, possessed by an ether-devil from the Upper Air.
Duppy Hob—devil worshipper skilled at crafting amulets, which trap devils in the ethers of the Upper Air to do his bidding among the Bright Worlds and on the Dark Shore.
Dwarves—fashioned by Duppy Hob's magic from maggots in the flesh of world serpents, which were behemoth and now-extinct vipers from World's End; these maggot-dwarves ultimately rebelled against their master and cast him into the Gulf, the dark abyss that falls away from the Bright Worlds to the Dark Shore.
Blue Tipoo—the one dwarf who has remained faithful to Duppy Hob, exiled by his fellows to a volcanic wilderness, where he crafts talismanic weapons in anticipation of his deposed master's return.
Jyoti—margravine of Elvre, the smallest and most ancient dominion of Irth, whose capital is Arwar Odawl.
Reece Morgan—a magus from the Dark Shore, endowed on Irth with astonishing magical powers, including the capacity to transform himself into Ripcat, a beastmarked man of great agility and physical strength.
Caval—deceased sorcerer and weapons master of Arwar Odawl, who once worked magic on the Dark Shore and there trained Reece Morgan to serve as his assistant.
Lara—the ghost of a witch who served Caval and Reece on the Dark Shore until brutally slain by local settlers fearful of her powers; Caval, out of respect for her service to him, delivered her wounded soul to the Abiding Star to be healed.
Dogbrick—a former thief from Saxar in the dominion of Zul on Irth and friend of Ripcat.
Amara—Old Ric's daughter, who died in childhood and remains his greatest sorrow.
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A. A. Attanasio
Thanks for spending time with me on Irth! If our adventure among the Bright Worlds has Charm for you, please join me in Octoberland http://goo.gl/zljoEr, our third and most incandescent journey among The Dominions of Irth!
Reviews connect a writer with a happy readership. If you enjoyed our time together with Old Ric, Jyoti and the other denizens of Irth – or if you feel that fantasy readers should be warned away, please leave a review on Amazon. Even if it’s just a sentence or two, your words answer mine. Appreciative or critical, your impression would be very much appreciated:
http://goo.gl/NONtHg
A. A. Attanasio
[email protected]
http://aaattanasio.com/
eBooks Available from A. A. Attanasio
(newly revised by the author)
Killing with the Edge of the Moon
Mama’s boy Chester Hubert drums up the courage to ask a witch’s granddaughter to the school dance—and finds himself hurtling through a modern, demonic fairy tale.
Quiet, elfin Flannery is not like other kids. She has caught the attention of the faerie, beautiful evil creatures from a mysterious Otherworld. They seduce their victims at midnight raves, then feed them to a dragon. For sport, they hunt souls with a black dog of prodigious evil. And they have taken Flannery for one of their own.
Thrust together in the Otherworld’s dark enchantment, Flannery and Chester discover they know each other better than they know their own hearts ... but can they sort things out before the black dog finds them?
And what was that about a dragon?
http://goo.gl/p4mEzc
The audiobook edition of Killing with the Edge of the Moon narrated by Destiny Landon and Lee James available at Audible.com.
http://goo.gl/VWhHKz
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Wyvern
A bold escapade with a young soul-catcher from Borneo kidnapped by pirates in 1609.
Headhunters, sorcerers, pirates and Indian princes thrive in this adventurous, poetic tale of a young outcast in Borneo. Born in 1609, son of a native woman and a Dutch sea captain he never knew, Jaki Gefjon grows up in the jungle as a sorcerer's apprentice. Later kidnapped by pirates, he befriends his captor, Trevor Pym, notorious for his dreaded man-of-war, Wyvern. The scientific marvels on the European privateer become the young soul-catcher’s passion—until he falls for Lucinda, the headstrong daughter of Pym's sworn enemy. Propelled by intrigue, pirates' battles, curses and visions, this seafaring saga takes Lucinda and Jaki from the South Seas to India—and to a bold, unforeseen destiny in the New World.
http://goo.gl/QZBxHo
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Hunting the Ghost Dancer
World Fantasy nominee.
50,000 years ago, three young friends band together for a perilous journey to find a new home after plague devastates their coastal tribe. Accompanied by a blind horse and armed with meager weapons and their own elusive courage, Hamr, Timov and Duru defy savage odds to survive in the strange and brutal realm of Ice Age Europe. This incredible quest takes them through primeval forests stalked by cave lions and across vast glacial moraines of thundering woolly rhinoceros—to the Thundertree clan. These forest people accept Duru, the girl, for her magical powers. But the two young men must prove themselves worthy by hunting down a giant Neanderthal—the last of his line—who has been terrorizing the tribe.
http://goo.gl/nNwOIy
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Servant of Birds
This historical romance, set in the 1190s during the rule of England's Richard the Lion Heart, exposes the raw experience of love: romantic, sexual and spiritual. The dramatic action moves from Wales through a tumultuous Europe unsettled by the Crusades to intensely colorful Palestine and back. Arrogant Guy Lanfranc assumes control of the family castle by sending his hated mother, the old baroness Ailena Valaise, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Wily Ailena vows revenge and finds the means in the person of Rachel Tibbon, a Jewish girl who survived the butchery of her family and other Jews after Crusader losses. Ailena's plot to regain the castle built by her father propels Rachel into a perilous adventure of vengeance, faith—and true love set against impossible odds.
http://goo.gl/6Wpr2h
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Brave Tails
Summoned by a vengeful sorcerer snake, an army of malevolent boars has invaded the peaceful haven of Riversplash Mountain. Only a few humble friends from the swamp dare to believe they can prevent the invaders from ravaging their fertile mountain. Farmer mouse Thrym, wise hedgehog Muspul, a father-and-son team of shrews, and the beautiful mouse maiden Olweena dangerously assume the masked identities of the Brave Tails, legendary, sword-wielding heroes of yore who originally rid their land of predators. But these small defenders will need more than masks and swords to stop this brutal onslaught—and the magic they seek is even more dangerous than the boars!
http://goo.gl/u50QVd
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The Radix Tetrad
The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual adaptation of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as "colorful, dramatic
, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."
Radix
Nebula Award Nominee
A saga of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery on an eerily alien Earth thirteen centuries in the future.
Rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy, this strange and beautiful world reveals its secrets as Sumner Kagan changes from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers. In the process, we accompany Sumner on an epic and transcendent journey.
http://goo.gl/BhoIss
The audiobook edition of Radix narrated by Sergei Burbank available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/ojf3qX
In Other Worlds
One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer, a sweet, slightly defeated bar manager, spontaneously transforms into energy and finds himself transported to the farthest extreme of the universe, 130 billion years in the future. Turned loose in time's last world, the strangest of all—the Werld—Carl discovers a domain of indescribably beautiful islands floating in a sky contoured by gravity lanes. These skyles are inhabited by the Foke, nomadic humans, who struggle for survival against the zōtl, a spidery intelligence that eats the pain of sentient beings. Among the Foke, Carl meets and wins the lovely Evoë, and their life together offers a blissful future in this kingdom that knows no aging or disease—until Evoë is captured by the zōtl. In order to save her life, Carl must return to Earth—130 billion years earlier—where he is shocked to discover that the world he has come back to is not the one he left...
A classic of quantum fiction.
http://goo.gl/FN37o9
The audiobook edition of In Other Worlds narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/Ds6CPw
Arc of the Dream
"A kaleidoscopic adventure, a potent piece of storytelling pulsing with menace, yet thoughtfully and gracefully rendered."—Roger Zelazny
"Arc of the Dream melds physics and metaphysics, adventure and speculation, intellectual entertainment and deeply felt emotion ... A step forward for a major writer."—Norman Spinrad
An alien from a higher dimension has fallen to Earth, trapped within a continuum too small to contain it. In its quest for freedom, this hyperspatial being touches a handful of lives: Filling a frail Asian man with unimaginable energy. Freeing a middle-aged American from the chains of time. Wrenching a lonely French girl out of the depths of madness. Opening a bitter young Hawaiian punk to hope and love. Together, they join in a visionary quest to save the Earth from destruction.
"A lovely book, full of poetry and wonder." —New York Daily News
http://goo.gl/cTqO2S
The Last Legends of Earth
“A wonderfully realized, richly-detailed and cohesive novel.” —People
“Few novels have ever had a broader scope … on a scale rarely seen in science fiction since the great works of Olaf Stapledon.”—The Denver Post
Seven billion years from now, long after the Sun has died and human life has become extinct, alien beings reconstruct homo sapiens from our fossilized DNA drifting as debris in deep space. We are reborn to serve as bait in a battle to the death between the Rimstalker, humankind's re-animator, and the zōtl, horrific creatures who feed vampire-like on the suffering of intelligent lifeforms.
Set in the artificial planetary system of Chalco-Doror, an enormous cosmic machine, The Last Legends of Earth is a love story, a gripping saga of struggle against alien control, and an examination of the machinery of creation and destruction.
The Last Legends of Earth is a magnificent, visionary epic of the far future.
http://goo.gl/h7fTqZ
The audiobook edition of The Last Legends of Earth narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/akxddK
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The Perilous Order of Camelot
Across this four book series, young King Arthur grows up with the help of Merlin in a world of supernatural powers set against him.
The Dragon and the Unicorn
A dragon’s dreamsong, a hunt for the unicorn’s horn, and the ceaseless wars of angels and demons begin this bold retelling of the Arthurian cycle. Here is magic. And dark romance. Here is Merlin’s most dangerous sorcery: the supernatural love story of Uther Pendragon and Ygrane queen of the Celts.
Old as the Big Bang, the demon Lailoken assumes human form in Roman Britain as Celts battle Saxons for mastery. The druid-queen he serves calls him Myrddin and sends him to find her true love—to fulfill for her people an ancient prophecy at the frontier of life and death.
Led by a unicorn and hunted by a dragon huge as the planet, Myrddin becomes Merlinus on his quest for the queen’s mate among her remorseless enemies, the Romans.
And finally as Merlin, he matches wits with gods and elves to unite Celtic queen and Roman warlord and weave the destiny of the most famous king.
http://goo.gl/1aoqTq
The Eagle and the Sword
The story of adolescent Arthor on his journey to Camelot and his destiny as King Arthur. When Merlin discovers that Arthor's only joy is killing, he vows to turn the belligerent youth around with a magical sword.
The story of teenage Arthor threads an immense, complex web of gods, demons, angels, a sorceress, a unicorn, a carpenter with a wish, a dragon, Saxon raiders, an impoverished Aquitanian lady with a secret weapon, battle-hardened Celtic chieftains and treacherous Roman nobles, knights, warring religions—and fairies.
http://goo.gl/zMwP3t
The audiobook edition of The Eagle and the Sword narrated by Thomas B. Hackett available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/q0mNjs
The Wolf and the Crown
Adolescent King Arthur's first year on the throne portrayed in chapters composed as 'flash fiction:' short, swift, emotionally percussive episodes, reflect the intensity of the boy king's struggle to consolidate power against brigands and invading pagan tribes.
Though he possesses the legendary sword Excalibur, the boy-king "Arthor" discovers that he must earn the respect of the warring lords of Britain before he can truly claim his place as their leader.
Gods old and new, ghosts, witches, demons, angels, vampires, dwarves, a monkey, elves, stolen and misplaced souls, the hell that is our present day, the fabulous world tree that is the magnetic field surrounding the Earth, the hollow hills above the dragon at the heart of the planet, heroic adventure, and selfless sacrifice, weave a tapestry of magic and enchanted historical realism.
http://goo.gl/m4ZtL2
The audiobook edition of The Wolf and the Crown narrated by Erin Jones available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/AfO6gW
The Serpent and the Grail
The narrator is Rna, a clan woman 90,000-years-old. She is eldest of the Nine Queens of Avalon. The place is Roman Britain, A.D. 491 on an alternate Earth, where Camelot is a monumental quantum gate to other worlds—
The boy-king Arthor has beaten back the berserker wolf warriors of the Saxon god, uniting his island kingdom—but at terrible cost. The Grail, the chalice of the Last Supper and the magical shield of Britain, has been stolen.
Without the Grail's protection, Britain lies parched and barren, a demon-haunted landscape. To find the Grail, Arthor's mother, Ygrane, must strike a dark bargain with Bright Night, elf-prince of the "pale people," in the hollow hills.
Merlin alone can show the way. But it is Arthor who must confront the Serpent, sword in hand, to fulfill the ancient blood rite of kings—and transform himself to King Arthur.
http://goo.gl/Yg1aPs
The audiobook edition of The Serpent and the Grail narrated by Bushra Laskar available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/JRRXcz
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The Dominions of Irth
Three epic fantasy novels explore Irth, a realm of wizards, witch queens, and magical amulets threatened by black magic from a mysterious world—Earth.
The Dark Shore
Here is an epic fantasy from the dawn of Creation, from the first worlds, the Bright Worlds. Among them is Irth. And upon Irth, in a realm of wizards, witch queens, and magic, destiny casts shadows into the Gulf and onto the Dark Shore, a universe of blacker magic and deeper mysteries—the greatest of which is Earth.
Irth is a world where magic rules—magic that radiates from the Abiding Star. The nobility, possessors of most of this mystic energy, dwell in floating cities that drift above their realms, plotting against each other for domination.
The nobility cast into the abyss those who fail in their attempts to hold or usurp power. There, the outcasts fall into the cold world of the Dark Shore—onto Earth—whence no one has ever returned. Until now.
