The Eye of Night
by Pauline J. Alama
From Pauline J. Alama comes a stirring fantasy tale of three vagabonds in a dying world and their terrifying quest into the heart of darkness...
The Eye Of Night
It is a magical world on the verge of collapse. In the North the Troubles rage. Cities and kings are being annihilated; the very earth is in upheaval, waking even the dead from their graves. All notions of time and space, of day and night, of seasonal change seem fractured beyond repair. But as the chaos moves slowly south, engulfing land after land, three unlikely heroes--an ex-priest, a battered serving girl, and an exquisitely beautiful, refined lady--journey bravely to the dying regions, their only weapon an enchanted stone of enigmatic power and ancient origin.
Jereth, disillusioned with his faith in the Rising God and robbed of his family after a deadly shipwreck, struggles to find meaning in his blighted life, searching the devastated land without direction--until he meets two extraordinary women. Each has her own secrets to keep; both are on a quest to save the world. But they must first save themselves, conquering their demons and rousing their well-disguised strengths. Only then will it be revealed how three penniless, unarmed wanderers can light a darkening world. For one is a prophet, one is a fool, and one’s life is now in their hands.
Reviews
From Booklist
The unlikely hero is a fantasy fiction staple, from The Hobbit's Bilbo Baggins to George R. R. Martin's dwarf antihero, Tyrion Lannister. Alama richly develops the concept. Jereth, a wandering former priest encounters and befriends an elegant beauty with a child's mind, Trenara, and her abused serving girl, Hwyn, in ghost-ridden Kelgarran Hall. Hwyn is there to steal the Eye of Night, a pocket-sized stone that contains the egg of something wonderful and terrible. She isn't sure just what the egg's hatching will bring, but she must bear it through miles of troubled wilderness to Larioneth. Jereth and Hwyn are young people with pain in their pasts, who resolutely pursue their tasks while learning to trust one another. Those they meet and the stories they hear occasionally lighten their hunger, thirst, and fear, and they are granted love before their journey's end. Martin's fans and lovers of Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion (2001) should enjoy this tale that is unencumbered by "high" language and full of everyday human eccentricity. --Roberta Johnson
One has to go back to the works of R.A. Lafferty to find another fantasy in which an apocalypse means not the end of everything or the begnning of a harsh and cruel world, but rather the beginning of new heavens and new earth. The Eye of the Night is an ingenious and exhilirating story with an indomitable woman protagonist. -Andrew Greeley, author of The Bishop in the West Wing
"In her debut novel, Ms. Alama delivers crisp dialogue, wonderful writing full of pathos and surprises, and clearly presents a complicated theology integral to the story." --Romantic Times
"an enjoyable and pleasantly different fantasy." --Locus Magazine
"A very good, engaging tale...a masterful first novel." --Rendezvous
The Eye Of Night
It is a magical world on the verge of collapse. In the North the Troubles rage. Cities and kings are being annihilated; the very earth is in upheaval, waking even the dead from their graves. All notions of time and space, of day and night, of seasonal change seem fractured beyond repair. But as the chaos moves slowly south, engulfing land after land, three unlikely heroes--an ex-priest, a battered serving girl, and an exquisitely beautiful, refined lady--journey bravely to the dying regions, their only weapon an enchanted stone of enigmatic power and ancient origin.
Jereth, disillusioned with his faith in the Rising God and robbed of his family after a deadly shipwreck, struggles to find meaning in his blighted life, searching the devastated land without direction--until he meets two extraordinary women. Each has her own secrets to keep; both are on a quest to save the world. But they must first save themselves, conquering their demons and rousing their well-disguised strengths. Only then will it be revealed how three penniless, unarmed wanderers can light a darkening world. For one is a prophet, one is a fool, and one’s life is now in their hands.
Reviews
From Booklist
The unlikely hero is a fantasy fiction staple, from The Hobbit's Bilbo Baggins to George R. R. Martin's dwarf antihero, Tyrion Lannister. Alama richly develops the concept. Jereth, a wandering former priest encounters and befriends an elegant beauty with a child's mind, Trenara, and her abused serving girl, Hwyn, in ghost-ridden Kelgarran Hall. Hwyn is there to steal the Eye of Night, a pocket-sized stone that contains the egg of something wonderful and terrible. She isn't sure just what the egg's hatching will bring, but she must bear it through miles of troubled wilderness to Larioneth. Jereth and Hwyn are young people with pain in their pasts, who resolutely pursue their tasks while learning to trust one another. Those they meet and the stories they hear occasionally lighten their hunger, thirst, and fear, and they are granted love before their journey's end. Martin's fans and lovers of Lois McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion (2001) should enjoy this tale that is unencumbered by "high" language and full of everyday human eccentricity. --Roberta Johnson
One has to go back to the works of R.A. Lafferty to find another fantasy in which an apocalypse means not the end of everything or the begnning of a harsh and cruel world, but rather the beginning of new heavens and new earth. The Eye of the Night is an ingenious and exhilirating story with an indomitable woman protagonist. -Andrew Greeley, author of The Bishop in the West Wing
"In her debut novel, Ms. Alama delivers crisp dialogue, wonderful writing full of pathos and surprises, and clearly presents a complicated theology integral to the story." --Romantic Times
"an enjoyable and pleasantly different fantasy." --Locus Magazine
"A very good, engaging tale...a masterful first novel." --Rendezvous