Icefalcon's Quest Book

Hitherto, Hambly's books about Darwath, a world menaced variously by awakened malign sleepers and an ice age, have been classic portal fantasies, in which the emphasis was on two transplanted Californians, Gil and Rudy, learning to cope with a world of magic and swordplay. In the original Darwath trilogy, the menace was the Dark, hivemind beings with a taste for human flesh, who wreck civilisation in a matter of weeks when their brainless hominid herds die; in the singleton Mother of Winter, it was devouring fungi and the old cold mind behind them. This new book shifts emphasis to Icefalcon, the exiled plains nomad who has come to value civilisation without feeling part of it, and to the corrupt magus who kidnaps Rudy's young royal stepson for his ancestral memories. Lost in the wastes of the North is another refuge against the cold and the Dark, a Keep which has, rather literally, a mind of its own. Icefalcon has to cope with cold and the vividly evoked claustrophobia of old dark places; he has also to comprehend his rejection by his barbarian clan. This is an intelligent fantasy thriller about choices, particularly the ones you never knew you made. --Roz KaveneyRead More