Search Results for: empire

Like two giants the old enemies faced each other across the reaches of the galaxy – the Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain. Terra was a Leviathan, encroaching ever further among the stars, promising peace and prosperity – but at the price of freedom. Ythri was smaller, but an empire in its own right, peopled by birdlike beings with a civilisation and intellect that easily matched Terra’s own.

And between the adversaries lay Avalon. One single planet, inhabited by human and Ythri alike. Both sides wanted to claim Avalon, by persuasion or by force, for it was a key world that could turn the tide of the war. But Avalon had developed a unique culture, a powerful blend of human and Ythrian thought. And Avalon had ideas of its own….

As the Sekk threaten Everien and the tribes squabble over the spoils of the Empire, Istar is given a message by a legendary Raptor: the massive Snowfalcon. It is a message that holds the key to the mystery of Tarquin of The Company.

Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of World War II but on the failure or success of a future “Tibetan Renaissance” to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic empires that threaten it.

Rhavas is a good, holy, and pious man, as befits a member of the clergy. He is also the cousin of the Avtokrator, ruler of the Empire. Hoping someday to become ecumenical patriarch of Videssos, he was reluctantly willing to bide his time in one of the smaller cities on the outskirts of the Empire.

Then civil war broke out, and the Avtokrator had to pull back the troops guarding the borders as he struggled for control of the Empire. Rhavas had to flee for his life as the fierce Khamorth nomads took advantage of the chaos and sacked the city he had come to love. He only survived because he accidentally discovered that he had an unsuspected power: Men often cursed each other – but Rhavas’s curse had the power to kill!

Rhavas had always followed Phos, the god of light and goodness, Videssos’ own god, just as he had always despised Phos’ evil rival Skotos. Those who fall off the Bridge of the Separator during judgment in the afterlife are doomed to dwell in Skotos’ ice and darkness forevermore. But Rhavas has reverenced logic as well as goodness, and knows the power to kill with a curse cannot be an attribute of Phos. As evil swallows up the world, Rhavas, ever the logician, decided that Skotos is actually the more powerful god, and becomes determind to change the official religion of Videssos. But in the end, it is he who will be changed, and neither the world nor he will ever be the same again…

Videssos was beset by enemies abroad and had fallen into decadence at home. But on his first night in the imperial capital, The Empires health mattered less to Krispos than finding a dry place to sleep.

His name is Caspar Last, and this is the unique chronicle of the vacation he took from the twentieth century. It begins – or does it? – when Caspar, a genius, poor of course, and resentful at that, decides to use his “time machine” to bring back a modest fortune. It begins – or maybe it doesn’t – with a mysterious bequest to a secret Otherhood charged with preserving and extending the British Empire at any cost. From the bold colonial days of empire-builder Cecil Rhodes through the wide-eyed and wondrous possibilities of the present to a strange and haunting future of magi and angels, of men and many races other than our own, John Crowley’s time-travel masterpiece surfs bravely along “the infinite, infinitely broken coastline of Time” to tell a story that takes place neither here nor there, but everywhen.

The fall of the Roman Empire was the denouement of a long and dramatic confrontation between powerful ideological forces and legendary men. R. A. Lafferty captures the true meaning of both, and examines the people, places, ideas and feelings that led to this epic struggle.

Rome’s demise was not a simple case of fierce barbarians sacking and subduing a decadent, crumbling city. The author has skillfully balanced the turmoil and illusions of a mighty, dying Empire against the vitality of the aggressive Huns, Vandals, and above all, the Goths. The result is one of the most perceptive and stimulating historical accounts ever written.

This is history told and read for sheer pleasure: exciting, splendid and complex. The Fall of Rome is a story of the men and women who made things happen, who were as awesome, poignant, and in some cases, as savage as the era itself.

Ethshar and the Northern Empire have been at war for hundreds of years. No one remembers why anymore or over what. No one dreams it could ever end until a wizard creates a sword that makes its user unbeatable.

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth’s colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her talent to try to make contact with the aliens. Unfortunately, it turns out that contact has already been made, and that the aliens are building an empire with the aid of borrowed Terran technology–an empire that’s beginning to crack under its internal strains and eternal challenges. And when Alex and Mariel are marooned by their reluctant hosts, things start to go from very bad to much worse….

Her ex-Imperial Highness of Outer Space had developed a conscience. With a well-armed space cruiser on her hands, she didn’t want to sell it to just anyone – that is, anyone under Empire control. So the former Empress and her ex-space captain husband became mercenaries for GLASS – the Galactic League for the Abolition of Suppression and Slavery.

Their first assignment was blockade-running, to bring antibiotics to the plague-ridden humans on Antrim, besieged by the Halicheki bird-people and ignored by the Empire. Only, this would be a ticklish business for they could not fire one shot at the Halicheki without being legally termed pirates. And although the ex-Empress and her husband were open-minded enough to try all sorts of devious tricks, the prospect of being hanged for piracy by the Empress’ successor did not appeal to either of their natures…

The Roman Empire never fell. Riven by political ambition and internal dissent, thrown into turmoil by rebellion and civil war, it changed and adapted, and somehow it survived. The balance of power between Constantinopolis in the east and Roma in the west ebbed and flowed, but the Empire endured. And it continued to expand, encountering the New World while still dominating the old.

Robert Silverberg’s superbly accomplished and ambitious novel explores over fifteen hundred years of Roman history through the very human stories of some of those who lived it. The young soldier encountering the exoticism of the New World for the first time; the minor official exiled to Arabia, for some misdemeanour, whose meeting with a religious fanatic may have changed the course of history; the military hero seizing his destiny; the innocent British aristocrat witnessing at first hand the bloody destruction of the royal family, and the children who find the last emperor in a decaying house in an old wood are all vividly and memorably portrayed.

SURRENDER TO THE FORCES OF MYERTA!

A small pastoral village is invaded without warning by the armies of a distant empire sweeping across the world. Facing mortal danger for the first time in their history, the villagers must forge a pact with the strange and fearsome race of flying people dwelling high above in the mountains.

Set in the misty time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of our own age, The King of Ys chronicles the coming of Gratillonius, the Roman prefect who became a king.

Gallicenae continues that story to tell of Gratillonius’ nine queens and penetrate to the very heart of the legend of the King of Ys . . .

Glaciers once covered the world with ice. Now a gap has opened in the ice wall. And through that gap come the men who call themselves “Rulers”.

Their cavalry rides on mammoths. Their bows can shoot faster, harder, farther. Their wizards wield power that neither the shamans of the Bizogots nor the wizards of Raumsdalian Empire can match, a magic that can melt the stone beneath a man’s feet and call down fire from the sky. Scattered Bizogot survivors hide. The Empire is shattered. The feckless Emperor is in hiding.

Against the Rulers stands Count Hamnet Thyssen and a few friends: Jarl Trasamund of the Three Tusk Bizogots, the adventurer Ulric Skakki, and, most important, Marcovefa, the female shaman who has magic that Rulers cannot counter.

Perhaps Hamnet and his allies can save their lands from Rulers. But first they must seek the legendary Golden Shrine – which has not been seen by human eyes since before the glaciers came.

Regein was the first human colony struck by the Quarn – aliens never seen by man, yet who sow a strange death through man’s crumbling empire. In humanity’s wreckage, Ling Sanjen, a rare half-breed Caucasian, sets forth to find what – and who – has broken the spirit of mankind…

Sealed in a giant amber cell, the two horned demons at Rainbow Bridge were the greatest discovery of all time. But now these creatures of legend have awakened and escaped – leaving an all-too-real trail of mutilated victims. The three major empires of the universe have no choice but to follow the demons…

Into their shattered cell – and into another dimension.

Helena, second in command of the Empire Of Earth’s security forces (and daughter of its head), has disappeared. She knows the identity of SOTE’s two most highly trained operators and their lives are now in danger . . . they have to find her before she can reveal their identities.

Getaway World is the fourth book in the Family d’Alembert series.

THE STORM LORD is a big novel of an unknown planet and of the conflict of empires and peoples on that world. It is a story of a priestess raped and slain, of a baby born of a king and hidden among strangers, and of how that child, grown to manhood, sought his true heritage.

It is a novel of alien gods and lost goddesses, of warriors and wanderers, and of vengeance long delayed.

It is an epic in every sense of the word.

Destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy, the warrior Sargon strode through the gates of Chalsadon – the last refuge of a once-proud empire. Only Sargon, a Barbarian and an Outsider, could stem the slaughter. Only he could wield the deadly golden maul, covered with the dust of centuries. Only he was fated to test the necromancy of Shadrazar, the beautiful Black Lord of Chaos. But Sargon was mortal . . .

From Turkish dominated Europe, across the high seas to the land of opportunity – the Aztec Empire. Dan Beauchamp is a young Englishman whose heart longs for fortune and adventure. But industrial Mexico is a long way from primitive Britain, and Dan has a lot to learn. From the city of London – better known as New Istanbul – to the untamed wilderness of North America here is a high adventure not to be missed.

Science has come to humanity’s rescue with two crucial discoveries – antigravity devices that enable whole cities to be lifted from the Earth to become giant spaceships, and longevity drugs that allow their inhabitants to live for thousands of years – lead to the establishment of a unique Galactic empire.

Now, the earth’s cities are able to abandon the worn-out homeworld for a new life, a new future. But what will they find as the hurtle off into the depths of space . . . ?

Seven thousand years ago one of Earth’s earliest civilisations was confronted by a menace from the stars – and died in a world-shaking effort to destroy that cosmic monster. But the death of that forgotten empire was not in vain, for they did succeed in entombing that dimension-shaking thing out of sight and harm to humanity.

But even their efforts could not make that burial permanent – and after seven millennia the monster stirred again, cracking through the new world of today.

When meteorologist Alvin Brook invents a means of controlling the weather, he imagines it will lead to his becoming a world benefactor, with riches for him and his family. Instead, Brook and his wife are murdered, and his invention stolen and misused by industrialist Marcus Denham. Denham creates the mighty empire of Climate Incorporated, controlling the world’s weather and holding nations to ransom…but he does not anticipate that outraged Nature – and Brook’s son – will take their revenge.

Two explorers from the Earth’s surface had carved themselves an empire at the Earth’s core – Pellucidar.

The dangers were many. Untamed tribes and vicious beasts were a constant peril, and there were times when the lives of the surface-men were at stake. But, just when things seemed hopeless, they came up with a trump card – a new weapon.

What they didn’t realize was that it was a weapon that could bring its makers to the brink of disaster.