Geomancer: Volume One of The Well of Echoes - Softcover

Irvine, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841492094 ISBN 13: 9781841492094

Publisher: Orbit, 2002

Synopsis

Two hundred years after the Forbidding was broken, Santhenar is locked in war with the lyrinx - intelligent, winged predators who will do anything to gain their own world. Despite the development of battle clankers and mastery of the crystals that power them, humanity is losing.
Tiaan, a lonely crystal worker in a clanker manufactory, is experimenting with an entirely new kind of crystal when she begins to have extraordinary visions. The crystal has woken her latent talent for geomancy, the most powerful of all the Secret Arts - and the most perilous.
Falsely accused of sabotage by her rival, Irisis, Tiaan flees for her life. Struggling to control her talent and hunted by the lyrinx, Tiaan follows her visions all the way to Tirthrax, greatest peak on all the Three Worlds, where a nightmare awaits her ...

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About this title

Review:

Geomancer starts a new sequence of novels "The Well of Echoes", set some centuries after Ian Irvine's earlier fantasy sequence "The View from the Mirror". The world of Santhenar is under attack from the Void by the lyrinx, giant winged intelligent carnivores, and generations of war have turned human society into a totalitarian spy-state with the front line of the war held over all men and so-called "Breeding Factories" held as a threat over women. Tiaan is a brilliant young artisan in a munitions factory whom the authorities are deliberately pressuring into excelling herself; when she falls foul of her rival Iriis and the apprentice spy Nish, events are set in chain which jeopardise the humanity of two worlds.

Irvine's strength here is that he makes us care not only about the idealistic, wet, misguidedly ruthless Tiaan, but also about the occasionally vicious and manipulative Iriis and Nish, who are not merely villains, but products of their unpleasant world somewhat redeemed by their growing regard for each other. This is, attractively, grimmer and grittier than most fantasy novels with a real sense of industrial squalor and a society in paranoid melt-down--and with a neatly unpleasant set of twists at the end. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

A page-turner of the highest order ... Irvine can now consider himself comfortably ranked next to the works of Robert Jordan and David Eddings. Formidable (SFX)

Ian Irvine has produced one of those rarities in the fantasy genre, and that is a unique, well-thought-through world coupled to a well-written storyline. A gripping read for Irvine fans, or a fresh new series for any other readers. (ENIGMA)

Geomancer starts a new sequence of novels "The Well of Echoes", set some centuries after Ian Irvine's earlier fantasy sequence "The View from the Mirror". The world of Santhenar is under attack from the Void by the lyrinx, giant winged intelligent carnivores, and generations of war have turned human society into a totalitarian spy-state with the front line of the war held over all men and so-called "Breeding Factories" held as a threat over women. Tiaan is a brilliant young artisan in a munitions factory whom the authorities are deliberately pressuring into excelling herself; when she falls foul of her rival Iriis and the apprentice spy Nish, events are set in chain which jeopardise the humanity of two worlds. (Irvine's strength here is that he makes us care not only about the idealistic, wet, misguidedly ruthless Tiaan, but also about the occasionally vicious and manipulative Iriis and Nish, who are not merely villains, but products of their unpleasant world so)

Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW ('Irvine has built a history and wonderful culture for his vivid world. His first novel vibrates with originality')

About this edition

• Publisher: Orbit
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1841492094
• ISBN 13: 9781841492094
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 640