Water Horse

by Melissa Scott

Overview

For the last twenty years, Esclin Aubrinos, arros of the Hundred Hills, has acted jointly with Alcis Mirielos, the kyra of the Westwood, and the rivermaster of Riverholme to defend their land of Allanoth against the Riders who invade from Manan across the Narrow Sea. He has long been a master of the shifting politics of his own people and his independently-minded allies, but this year the omens turn against him. The Riders have elected a new lord paramount, hallowed servant of the Blazing One, a man chosen and fated for victory.

The omens agree that Nen Elin, Esclin's stronghold and the heart of Allanoth, will fall when a priest of the Blazing One enters its gates. Esclin needs a spirit-bonded royal sword, a talismanic weapon made of star-fallen iron, to unite the hillfolk behind him. But the same vision that called for the sword proclaimed that Esclin will then betray it, and every step he takes to twist free of the prophecies brings him closer to that doom.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162369899
Publisher:	Candlemark & Gleam
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Melissa Scott is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, where she earned her PhD in the Comparative History program. She is the author of more than thirty original science fiction and fantasy novels as well as authorized tie-ins for Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Wars Rebels, and the anime series gen:LOCK. She won Lambda Literary Awards for Trouble and Her Friends, Shadow Man, Point of Dreams (written with her late partner, Lisa A. Barnett), and Death By Silver, with Amy Griswold. She also won Spectrum Awards for Shadow Man, Fairs’ Point, Death By Silver, and for the short story “The Rocky Side of the Sky” (Periphery, Lethe Press) as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her most recent solo novel, Finders, was published in 2018 by Candlemark & Gleam and she is currently at work on the next book in the sequence.

Editorial Reviews

Sumptuous storytelling, well-defined characters, and superb attention to detail animate this outstanding epic fantasy from Lambda Literary Award winner Scott (Trouble and Her Friends). // Scott crafts an elaborate, rousing narrative of shifting alliances and supernatural intrusions into the natural world while taking the time to establish deep, handsomely delineated relationships and nuanced LGBTQ characters. This is epic fantasy done right.

Publishers Weekly - Starred Review

Scott's complicated world fills up space, spills off the edges of the page into uncharted territory. It feels real, satisfyingly deep—and at the same time, tantalising hints of other stories, other histories, made me intensely curious for more. I read Water Horse in a single afternoon's sitting, in a year in which I've frequently struggled to finish novels, or even start them at all. Deft and atmospheric, with Scott's trademark elegant prose, Water Horse is an engaging delight.

Tor.com - Liz Bourke

An epic fantasy novel that reads like science fiction... // Water Horse takes place in a well-drawn, meticulously-presented world where a finely-codified technology of magic is based on music and oaths. The world has a long, eventful history and a baroque social-political structure... // Melissa Scott stirs all of this worldbuilding into her tale very artfully, in ways very familiar to science fiction readers. // ...a delicious struggle between fate and free will.

Analog SF - Don Sakers