|
Av. Customer Rating:
  (4.46
based on 131 ratings)
Program Type: Audiobook (Fiction); Unabridged
Narrator:
Kate Reading
Publisher:
Blackstone Audiobooks, 2005
Length: 16 hours and 22 min.
Audio Format:
Romantic Times Award Winner - Best Fantasy Novel,
2003
Hugo Award Winner, Best Novel, 2004
Nebula Award Winner, Best Novel, 2004
"Rich in sumptuous detail and speculative
theology....This engaging installment of Chalion's
mythical history whets the appetite for new marvels yet
to come." (Publishers Weekly)
"Bujold couldn't characterize badly if threatened with a
firing squad, and what really keeps one turning the
pages is the fascinating cast of characters, not that
the plot is anything to sneeze at." (Booklist)
Three
years have passed since the widowed Dowager Royina Ista
found release from the curse of madness that kept her
imprisoned in her family's castle of Valenda. Her
newfound freedom is costly, bittersweet with memories,
regrets, and guilty secrets, for she knows the truth of
what brought her land to the brink of destruction. And
now the road, escape, beckons...A simple pilgrimage,
perhaps. Quite fitting for the Dowager Royina of
Chalion.
Yet something else is free, too, something beyond
deadly. To the north lies the vital border fortress of
Porifors. Memories linger there as well, of wars and
invasions and the mighty Golden General of Jokona. And
someone, something, watches from across that border:
humans, demons, gods.
Ista thinks her little party of pilgrims wanders at
will, but whose? When Ista's retinue is unexpectedly set
upon not long into its travels, a mysterious ally
appears, a warrior nobleman who fights like a berserker.
The temporary safety of her enigmatic champion's castle
cannot ease Ista's mounting dread, however, when she
finds his dark secrets are entangled with hers in a net
of the gods' own weaving.
In her dreams, the threads are already drawing her to
unforseen chances, fateful meetings, fearsome choices.
What the inscrutable gods commanded of her in the past
brought her land to the brink of devastation. Now, once
again, they have chosen Ista as their instrument. And
again, for good or for ill, she must comply.
Don't
miss Lois McMaster Bujold's first book about Chalion,
The Curse of Chalion. |
