The City of Silk and Steel ( aka The Steel Seraglio)

✍ Scribed by Carey, Louise;Carey, Linda;Malavia, Nimit;Carey, Mike

• Publisher: ChiZine
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 521 KB
• Category: Fiction
• City: Toronto, Ont.
• ISBN: 192746904X

✦ Synopsis

Intro; TITLE PAGE; COPYRIGHT; DEDICATION; TABLE OF CONTENTS; Prologue; Rem Speaks of These Things; Book the First; Bokhari Al-Bokhari and His Three-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five Concubines; Fireside Story; The Tale of the Dancing Girl; The Cup Lands Upright, Part the First; The Tale of the Girl, Her Father, Her Two Suitors and the King of Assassins; The Cup Lands Upright, Part the Second; The Tale of the Librarian of Bessa; The Tale of the Librarian of Bessa; How Hakkim Found His Enemy; The Youth Staked Out in the Desert; The Fate of Those Who Search for Truth; In the Mountains of the North.;The sultan Bokhari Al-Bokhari of Bessa has 365 concubines'until a violent coup puts the city in the hands of the religious zealot Hakkim Mehdad. Hakkim has no use for the pleasures of the flesh: he condemns the women first to exile and then to death. Cast into the desert, the concubines must rely on themselves and each other to escape from the new sultan's fanatical pursuit. But their goals go beyond mere survival: with the aid of the champions who emerge from among them, they intend to topple the usurper and retake Bessa from the repressive power that now controls it. The assassin, Zuleika, whose hands are weapons. The seer, Rem, whose tears are ink. The wise Gursoon, who was the dead sultan's canniest advisor. The camel-thief, Anwar Das, who offers his lying tongue to the concubines' cause. Together, they must forge the women of the harem into an army, a seraglio of steel, and use it to conquer a city. But even if they succeed, their troubles will just be beginning'because their most dangerous enemy is within their own number.

✦ Subjects

Coups d'état