The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1

by Anne Lyle

Overview

When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods--and a skrayling ambassador--to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital?

Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is seconded to the ambassador's bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems. What he learns about the skraylings and their unholy powers could cost England her new ally--and Mal his soul.

File Under: Fantasy [ Midsummer Magic | Skraylings | Double Trouble | Comedy of Terrors ]

e-book ISBN: 978-0-85766-215-6

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857662156
Publisher:	Watkins Media
Publication date:	03/27/2012
Series:	Night's Masque , #1
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	632,731
File size:	509 KB

About the Author

Anne Lyle is a website developer and debut author from Nottinghamshire, England. She has an active website, attends UK conventions and is a dedicated Twitter user. The author lives in Cambridge, UK.

Editorial Reviews

Lyle’s impressive debut is set in an alternate Elizabethan England, where the sons of the widowed queen await the ambassador of the skraylings, a New World race whose mercantile alliance is vital to English interests. Unemployed swordsman Maliverny Catlyn, in need of cash to maintain his brother in a lunatic asylum, takes a gig as the ambassador’s bodyguard. Soon he and his tutor in the skrayling language, Coby Hendricks, an apprentice in an acting company and secretly a woman in disguise, are caught up in political intrigue. A lively cast of actors and their down-at-the-heel associates contrasts neatly with mysterious powers and goals of the inhuman skraylings as a theatrical competition in the ambassador’s honor offers opportunities for both actors and assassins. With an effective mix of espionage, backstage drama, and mystery, Lyle provides compelling drama in an intriguing setting. Agent: John Berlyne, the Zeno Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly