Icefalcon's Quest: 5 (Darwath) - Softcover

Hambly, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345470354 ISBN 13: 9780345470355

Publisher: Random House Worlds, 1995

Synopsis

While chaos reigned in the Eastern Lands, the Keep of Dare stood as a bastion against war and bandits and the spawn of unnatural sorceries. Then twin blows rocked the citadel: the fearsome Alketch army mounted siege, even as young Prince Tir was snatched from the heart of the Keep. Behind the terror was the depraved, hook-handed general Vair na-Chandros. He had learned that the royal child possessed forbidden wisdom: a secret with which the bloodthirsty Vair intended to conquer the world.

One single man posed a threat to Vair's vaunting ambition: the legendary warrior known as the Icefalcon. Banished by his own people and scorned as a barbarian by others, only he could hope to free the boy from Vair's clutches. With his sister Cold Death--a sorcerer whose magic was as sharp as her tongue--the Icefalcon embarked on a dangerous mission of rescue and redemption.

Braving nightmare demons and the endless hordes of Vair's inhuman soldiers, he shadowed Vair and his small captive beyond the reaches of the known world. And when the boy led Vair to the forgotten Keep of the Shadow at the End of Time, the Icefalcon would face his greatest battle . . . for his prince, for his honor, and for all eternity.

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: Random House Worlds
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0345470354
• ISBN 13: 9780345470355
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368