Richly-alluring High Fantasy from a Master Fantasist Ripe for Rediscovery!
Have you been looking for a fantasy world-builder on the level of Patricia McKillip, Guy Gavriel Kay, Fritz Leiber or—dare we say it Yes, we dare!—J.R.R.Tolkien himself P.C. Hodgell is nigh.
Welcome to the world of the Kencyrath, where ivory-armored, carnivorous horses travel in herds called "rages," pretty butterflies might very well suck your life's blood, and tree leaves migrate south for the winter. It's a dangerous and beautiful place where it's easy to get yourself killed. And resurrected. And possibly become bound to somebody else's soul in the process.
Not your ordinary high fantasy landscape. And Jamethiel Priest's-bane is far from your average high fantasy heroine. This is one fantasy character who never does the expected.
First of all, Jame's youth was spent in a desert wasteland in the shadow of Perimal Darkling, infested with haunts, where life and death, animate and inanimate, often overlapped. As for food, think in terms of screaming carrots and reproachful potato eyes following you around the kitchen. As for the cabbage heads and what was in them, we won't even discuss that. She hates the Highborn, whom she sees as manipulative and power-mad. She'd rather be a thief (albeit a curiously honorable one), and she'd much rather spend time with her soul-bound snow leopard than in the Kencyrath Ladies House. Unfortunately, Jame discovers that not only is she one of the despised Highborn, she happens to be the long lost daughter of the mad Highlord Ganth and the well-nigh mythic Jamethiel Dream-weaver. As such, she possesses the power to call souls out of their bodies and slay the occasional god or two (as well as resurrect them!).
To say the least, Jame leads a complicated life, not helped by the current Highlord, Torisen, her twin brother who fears her darkling blood and is (somehow) ten years her senior. But one thing is for certain: even though destruction often follows in Jame's wake, she is never, ever passive. This is one heroine whose curiosity and competence (she survived two years in the world of the darkling damned, after all) are always at the forefront. She has two mottos: "Some things need to be broken," and "If I knew what I was doing, I probably wouldn't be doing it." Sometimes cities fall as a result (ask the inhabitants of Tai-tastigon). But, more often than not, Jame finds a way to move one step closer to her ultimate destiny: a confrontation with the unthinkably alien being called Perimal Darkling that threatens existence itself.
Darkly droll, as intricate as many a Medieval tapestry, the Kencyr books are a controlled explosion of carefully-crafted creativity—which is exactly what one would expect from an author who is a) a master stain-glass artist and art knitter; b) an experienced horsewoman (who, nonetheless, holds the stable's record for falling off); and, last but not least, c) an accomplished scholar specializing in the 19th century novel, notably those of Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.
So here they are. The God Stalker Chronicles. Every Kencyrath book and short story ever published, collected in one e-volume and available from Baen Books' WebScriptions (www.webscriptions.net). This volume contains: God Stalk, Dark of the Moon, Seeker's Mask, Blood and Ivory (the highly-sought-after "Jamethiel" short story collection), and To Ride the Rathorn.
The megavolume will be released April 15, 2007, and will be available in the reader-friendly, unencrypted formats WebScriptions is known for. No need to track each volume down on a dead tree (and, in the Kencyr universe, the smarter trees run away from would-be harvesters, anyway!) For the next three months, the complete works will go for $20. As always, we'll let the math do the selling on this one. Try not to faint when you factor in the shipping costs. AFTER the three months is up, this special collection will no longer be available for sale at this price and we'll offer each individual God Stalker Chronicles ebook title for $5 each. (Still a great deal, of course!)
