Search Results for: city-of-no-return

Leaving the Rise, Claidi anticipates a joyful reunion with her beloved Argul.

Instead, her return to the Hulta people meets only mistrust, fury and betrayal. Determined to unravel the lies and deceit which haunt her past and threaten her future, she journeys northward.

But in the strange cities-and even stranger people-she finds, Claidi sees only more mystery and deeper secrets.

Ethshar, or “the World” as its inhabitants call it, is the setting for almost a dozen novels by Lawrence Watt-Evans. The dominant nation on the World is the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, while the largest, richest city, where most of the stories are set, is Ethshar of the Spices. The name itself comes from words meaning “safe harbor.” You don’t need to have read any of the novels to enjoy the stories herein; each one should stand alone. And if you’ve read the novels, you will enjoy this return to the world of Ethshar with 11 stories…

Following the development of massive airships, naïve Londoner Bert Smallways becomes accidentally involved in a German plot to invade America by air and reduce New York to rubble. But although bombers devastate the city, they cannot overwhelm the country, and their attack leads not to victory but to the beginning of a new and horrific age for humanity. And so dawns the era of Total War, in which brutal aerial bombardments reduce the great cultures of the twentieth century to nothing. As civilization collapses around the Englishman, now stranded in a ruined America, he clings to only one hope – that he might return to London, and marry the woman he loves.

Beneath the vast and trackless Sahara there lies a cavern so immense the whole nations could be swallowed up within it. There reside in the eternal subterranean glow the last of the Cro-Magnons and their rivals the Neanderthals, lost remnants of ancient surface empires, and hordes of beasts and beings from all the ages of prehistory.

Into this world, Zanthodon, penetrated the soldier-of-fortune Eric Carstairs – and immediately became embroiled in tremendous adventures!

Hurok the Neanderthal had learned the meaning of friendship from Carstairs and in return would lead an expedition of cavemen to the dinosaur-guarded city of Zar where Carstairs had fallen captive to a sadistic queen and her scheming advisors.

After the death of her father – a former royal adviser – Zoe Ardelay has little time to grieve before she receives astonishing news: she has been chosen to become the king’s fifth wife.

Zoe accompanies an ambassador to the royal city, but once there she slips away and hides among those who live along the shores of the mighty river. For Zoe is coru: ruled by the elemental sign of water.

Gradually she discovers that she is, in fact, the coru prime. Which means she must return to the palace, not as an unwilling bride for the king but as a woman with power in her own right . . .

In a distant future, on an Earth populated by a scant few hundred thousand humans, the Atkins’s Thomas performs without question the duties for which he was genetically bred. Called “Soldier” by one and all, he is a man of honor and ability, responsible for keeping the peace, for maintaining the status quo . . . and, most important, for guarding the great Book House on the hill – a vast repository of Last Culture knowledge presided over by Libary, Soldier’s mentor, the most senior of the mystic Celibate scholars.

Such is Thomas’s life in the serene, semi-primitive world without nations and cities and governments – until the night the starship comes home. Having fled a dangerously overcrowded Earth years before the Collapse and the Twilight that followed, for seven centuries the men and women of the space-going vessel Search have been combing the galaxy for inhabitable planets – their aging processes dramatically slowed by the relative magic of light speed travel and cryogenic sleep. And now, lonely and frustrated, the weary voyagers have returned to a homeworld unrecognizably altered by the relentless tides of time – a world that does not want them back.

A bitter welcome awaits the Searchers, as old Libary gathers Earth’s Ordinands and Elders together to tap the terrifying power of the collective unconscious – in preparation of the Carnival night when they will sweep the helpless intruders back to their lonely sky in the name of Holy Science. And it is Soldier who stands in the middle, silent and alone – bound by duty to evict the homesick star-travelers . . . yet cursed by a preordained genetic destiny that has decreed their eviction will mean Soldier’s death.

Life on the moon under anything less than optimal conditions had always been a nightmare, and as Joe Kenmore and his colleague, Moreau, drove back to the City On The Moon on that day the Earth shuttle was due to land, the nearby mountain supporting critical elements of the shuttle’s landing mechanisms crumbled causing an avalanche and resulting in chaos.

Optimal conditions were no where in sight that day and as Kenmore and Moreau’s investigations lead to their conclusion that explosions had been responsible for the avalanche. Now they realized that they were in a race against the clock to restore the landing beam before the shuttle had reached it’s point of no return prior to landing.

Kenmore had more than strictly humanitarian reasons for wanting to prevent a mishap aboard the shuttle that day, because on this particular mission, Arlene Gray was aboard. Kenmore had been anxiously awaiting her arrival, and now his love’s life might hang in the balance.

Prince Zarkon’s arch-enemy, Dr Zanfor Sinestro, returns for a second match in the fourth novel in Lin Carter’s fantastic Zarkon series, hoping to extort millions of dollars by targeting the banks of Knickerbocker City by targeting them with artificially generated earthquakes.

Callie Delgado always puts family first, and unfortunately her brother knows it. She’s emptied her savings, lost work, and spilled countless tears trying to keep him out of trouble, but now he’s in deeper than ever, and his debt is on Callie’s head. She’s given a choice: do some dirty work for the mob, or have her brother returned to her in tiny pieces.

Renting souls is big business for the religious population of Gem City. Those looking to take part in immoral-or even illegal-activity can borrow someone else’s soul, for a price, and sin without consequence.

To save her brother, Callie needs a borrowed soul, but she doesn’t have anywhere near the money to pay for it. The slimy Soul Charmer is willing to barter, but accepting his offer will force Callie into a dangerous world of magic she isn’t ready for.

With the help of the guarded but undeniably attractive Derek-whose allegiance to the Charmer wavers as his connection to Callie grows-she’ll have to walk a tight line, avoid pissing off the bad guys, all while struggling to determine what her loyalty to her family’s really worth.

Losing her brother isn’t an option. Losing her soul? Maybe.