The Keeper's Six

by Kate Elliott

Overview

You never stop worrying about your kids, even when they're adults. Kate Elliott's action-packed The Keeper's Six features a world-hopping, bad-ass, spell-slinging mother who sets out to rescue her kidnapped adult son from a dragon lord with everything to lose.

It’s been a year since Esther set foot in the Beyond, the alien landscape stretching between worlds, crossing boundaries of space and time. She and her magical traveling party—her Hex—haven’t spoken since the Concilium banned them from the Beyond for a decade. But when she wakes in the middle of the night to her grown son’s cry for help, the members of her Hex are the only ones she can trust to help her bring him back from wherever he has been taken.

Esther will have to risk everything to find him. Undercover and hidden from the Concilium, she and her Hex will be tested by false dragon lords, a darkness so dense it can suffocate, and the bones of an old crime come back to haunt her.

There are terrors that dwell in the space between worlds.

Also Available by Kate Elliott:

The Crossroads Series

1. Spirit Gate

2. Shadow Gate

3. Traitors' Gate

Unconquerable Sun

Servant Mage

Furious Heaven

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250769077
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	196,671
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kate Elliott has been writing science fiction and fantasy for 30 years, after bursting onto the scene with Jaran. She is best known for her Crown of Stars epic fantasy series and the New York Times bestselling YA fantasy Court of Fives. Elliott's particular focus is immersive world-building & centering women in epic stories of adventure, amidst transformative cultural change. She lives in Hawaii, where she paddles outrigger canoes & spoils her Schnauzer.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/17/2022

Treacherous terrain and even more treacherous trading partners ramp up the stakes of this masterful contemporary fantasy from Elliott (Unconquerable Sun). Esther Green, the hard-nosed leader of a Hex of six skilled trekkers who brave the shifting landscapes of the Beyond, a place between worlds, sticks to her principles on a dangerous job—and her convictions get her Hex’s travel privileges suspended by the Concilium for 10 years. Suspension be damned, however, when her son Daniel, the Keeper of a portal to Earth, is kidnapped by the dragon Zosfadal. Esther reassembles her team and marches to confront the dragon and bargain for her son’s freedom. The deal she strikes with Zosfadal leads Esther and the Hex even deeper into danger, through deadly magical storms, and back to the scene of the original sin that pushed the Concilium to ban the team in the first place. A rare standalone adventure from Elliott, this still manages to pack in an epic amount of worldbuilding. The conflicting goals of the smart, well-shaded cast produce believable confrontations that will appeal to those looking for mature, thoughtful conflict. Readers are sure to be impressed. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Finalist for the Locus Award!

“A short and satisfying romp with a fully developed world and tightly designed magic system. …A definite recommend: light fantasy for the more discerning reader.” —Wall Street Journal

“Treacherous terrain and even more treacherous trading partners ramp up the stakes of this masterful contemporary fantasy from Elliott. …Readers are sure to be impressed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“The Keeper’s Six is as unusual as its hero. Many pieces will be familiar to fantasy readers, and the arrangement is distinct—it contrasts the recognisable and the novel in a way that makes for compelling reading.” —Aurealis

Praise for Servant Mage:

“[This] is an absolute gem of a story, a peek into a fascinating, fully realized world that manages to explore issues of power, consent, class and destiny before turning over some of fantasy's tropes completely on their head. I loved it.” —S. A. Chakraborty

“I would follow [Fellion] anywhere... I highly recommend this. I stayed up way too late finishing it and am still thinking about it a week later.” —Mary Robinette Kowal

“A rich and atmospheric lacework of worldbuilding, politics and magic—and of one woman's journey to find her place in the wake of a revolution. Mesmerising, relentless and sharp.” —Aliette de Bodard

“Elliott uses a relatable main character and a complex and intriguing setting to dive into the consequences of revolution with an eye toward class and power dynamics; readers will be left wanting more.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

10/01/2022

Esther's son has been kidnapped. So she'll have to take her disgraced band of intrepid explorers out into the Beyond, outside the settled worlds of which Earth is a hidden, backwater trade outpost. Her son has been added to a dragon's hoard, but she will get him back. Because that's what she does: walk the spaces between the worlds to pick up magical packages from bizarre places, rescue people and creatures she's not even supposed to see, and get herself and her troop into exciting and dangerous places—and back out again. Esther is addicted to the adrenaline of her work even as she's forced to confront that her days at it are numbered and it puts her friends and loved ones at a bigger risk than she imagined. But she hasn't lost her sense of wonder at it all, and the reader experiences it with her. VERDICT The latest from Elliott (Servant Mage) is a rollicking magical adventure with a beating heart. Recommended for readers who like their portal fantasies to step through actual portals and especially for those who fell in love with the hidden linked worlds of Ilona Andrews's "Innkeepers Chronicles" series.—Marlene Harris

Library Journal