Fünf Jahre nach der Zerstörung Vierlandens muss Jant Shira, der geflügelte Bote des Imperators, einer Gesandtschaft zu einer neuen Insel folgen. Dort fordert ein Unsterblicher das Imperium heraus, während seine Frau eine Affäre mit einem anderen Unsterblichen beginnt.
Das Land Awia wird vom Imperator San und einem Kreis aus Unsterblichen regiert. Sie helfen den Sterblichen - Menschen, Awianer, Rhydanner (die beiden letzteren sind geflügelt, jedoch flugunfähig) - bei ihrem Kampf gegen mannsgroße, erbarmungslose Insekten, deren Herkunft unbekannt ist und die eine hohe Mauer quer durchs Land errichtet haben. Da entdeckt Komet Jant Shira, der einzige Unsterbliche, der fliegen kann, den Grund, warum sich immer mehr und mehr Insekten über Aiwa hermachen … Alternativwelt-Roman, in dem sich Fantasy-Motive mit Elementen aus Horror und Cyberpunk mischen.
In the fifth book in the Castle series, Steph Swainston returns to her uniquely imagined fantasy world.
Steph Swainston returns to the dazzling, dizzying world of the Fourlands with the audacious sequel to her acclaimed novels The Year of Our War and No Present Like Time . Jant Comet, the messenger, has survived deadly insects, internecine politics, and even his own debilitating, life-threatening addiction. But now he faces a challenge greater than any he has met in the last several centuries, one that could shake the foundations of the Fourlands forever. For the Emperor himself is riding to the front, and nothing is as it seems . . .
This is the book Steph Swainston's fans have been waiting for. A prequel to the Castle novels.
50 immortals, chosen by the emperor lead humanity in an endless war against hordes of ginant insects. Their immortality, conferred on them by the emperror can be taken away if they lose a challange to be part of the circle of 50. Jant, the emperor's drug-addicted messanger, the only man who can fly, tells the story of mankinds savage fight for survival in a uniquely imagined, beautiful fantasy world.
Unique among his fellow immortals and mortal folk alike, Jant Comet can fly. His talent is a gift and a curse that has earned him a place in the Castle Circle as Messenger to the Emperor San -- soaring high and free above the bloody battlefields of his world, carrying word back to his master of progress and regress in the ever-escalating conflict between man and the awful armies of giant, flesh-devouring insects. But while Jant's duty is to remain neutral in the petty squabbles and power plays of the fifty who will neither age nor die naturally, bitter rivalries that have festered for centuries now threaten to incite a savage civil war. And Jant may be the only being alive capable of stemming the onrushing tide of destruction and the unstoppable insect infestation. For only he can gain entrance -- through extreme doses of the narcotic that owns his soul -- into a place of darkest wonders and revelations; a strange and horrific alternate reality that none but Jant Comet believes exists. A literary triumph of the first water -- bold, stylish, and breathtakingly original -- Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War ascends like a rocket to the upper reaches of the imagination and loudly heralds the arrival of a true modern master of the fantastic.
