Icefalcon’s Quest - Softcover

Hambly, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006483038 ISBN 13: 9780006483038

Publisher: Voyager, 1998

Synopsis

A brilliant new fantasy from the author of the bestselling Darwath series, Icefalcon’s Quest is a follow-up to Hambly’s Mother of Winter.

The Icefalcon’s first mistake was to rescue the old man named Linok. His second mistake was to leave Tir, his young charge in the old man’s care...

Linok was not as he seemed, and when he disappeared, snatching Tir away with him, the Icefalcon begins a desparate quest to rescue his charge. But this will be no ordinary struggle, for against the Icefalcon come hellish furies – an army of ghostly soldiers horrifically constructed, demons of the air and magic so dark it terrifies him. There is also Hethya, the young woman who was once in Linok’s care. She claims to be possessed by a spirit who lived in the Time of the Dark and believes it knows the secret in the crypt below the Keep, the target against which all the forces of darkness are gathering...

About this title

Review:

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 Kaveney

Review:

‘Hambly is a shining example of what can be done with the motifs and wonders that endear this genre to those of us who still seek a touch of magic in our reading’
Charles de Lint

‘An enviable and intricate talent’
Janny Wurts

About this edition

• Publisher: Voyager
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0006483038
• ISBN 13: 9780006483038
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352