โ Scribed by Stephen Deas
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The power of the Realms depends on its dragons. With their terrifying natures tempered by a mysterious liquid, they are ridden by the aristocracy and bred for hunting and war. But as dangerous political maneuverings threaten the empire, a single dragon has gone missing. And even one dragon-returned to its full intelligence and fury-could spell disaster for the Realms...
**
Deas's dragon-riding fantasy debut lumbers along as sinister Prince Jehal, called the Viper, connives, seduces, poisons, and murders his way to the throne of the Kingdom of the Endless Sea. The story only leaves well-trodden fictional ground when unique white dragon Snow begins to communicate telepathically with her handler, Kailin. Neither cuddly or companionable, dragons in this world are violent fire-breathers who have been tranquilized by alchemists and forced to serve aristocrats for war and hunting. Snow's dreams of freedom ignite her urge to incinerate humans and all their works, and she brings other dragons into her quest to destroy the alchemists forever. Played off against villainous Jehal and repetitive palace intrigues, Deas's dragons provide fitful shuddery glimpses into alien minds, a few brief fireworks in an otherwise commonplace performance. (Feb.)
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Fantasy readers can be a bit, well, snooty about how they take their dragons (fans are rarely ambivalent about the works of George R. R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, and Naomi Novik, for instance), and Stephen Deas takes a chance by making those most misunderstood of fantasy elements the focus of his debut novel. Although Deas gives his imagination free rein in The Adamantine Palace and his short chapters (70 in a relatively brief book) keep things moving, critics call into question his world-building skills, as well as the SF/F penchant these days for trilogies, which only guarantees that nothing much will get resolved in the first installment. Still, theres enough here to whet a fantasy readers appetite (the sequel, King of the Crags, is due in 2010), and we hope that experience will only make Deas stronger.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
Library : Fantasy
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780451463371
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
The power of the Realms depends on its dragons. With their terrifying natures tempered by a mysterious liquid, they are ridden by the aristocracy and bred for hunting and war. But as dangerous political maneuverings threaten the empire, a single dragon has gone missing. And even one dragon-returned
More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.
**From the *New York Times* betselling author of *Queen of Hearts* comes another mystery for "fans of P.G. Wodehouse looking for laughs mingled with some amateur sleuthing." (*Publishers Weekly*)** **Lady Georgiana Rannoch won't deny that being thirty-fifth in line for the British throne has its
**In his greatest challenge yet, international spy Simon Riske must face a ring of ruthless masterminds and foil a plot with global implications as he becomes the world's most wanted man.** Life is good for Rafael de Bourbon. The forty-year-old Spaniard recently married to a wealthy English beauty
John and Joey are a young couple immersed in their local midwestern punk scene, who after graduating college sever all ties and move to a perverse and nameless northeastern coastal city. They drift in and out of art museums, basement shows, and derelict squats seemingly unfazed as the city slowly sl
SUMMARY: Bestselling author Katharine Kerr joins with Mark Kreighbaum to present a vivid, alluring and terrifying world of the future. They call it Palace, the capital of a planet located in a region of space known as the Pinch. Here a bitter Lep outcast has been hired to murder two humans: Arno,