The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
For 312 years the rotstorm has blighted the ruins of the Ferron Empire.
Born of an unholy war between gods themselves, it scours the land with acid mists and deadly lightning, spawning twisted monstrosities from its nightmarish depths.
On the Stormwall, the men and women of the Stormguard maintain their vigil - eyes sharp, blade sharper - defending the Undal Protectorate from the worst of the rotstorm's corruption.
But behind the stormfront, something is stirring, kindling the embers of an ancient conflict and a plan to kill a god.
Will Stormguard steel be enough to meet the coming tempest?
***
Sergeant Floré Artollen patrols the wind-gnarled pines of Hookstone Forest for the Watch. But it wasn't always so.
She spent years on the wall with the Stormguard, face to face with the bloodshed and horror of the rotstorm.
With the storm now far beyond her western horizon, here she has a new life, a home, a husband and a daughter.
But when roving lights descend from night skies, bright orbs of silver fire in the night, Floré's village is devastated, her husband mortally wounded and her daughter abducted.
To get her back, Floré will have to take up her longsword and silvered dagger, don the guard's heavy metal plate gauntlets and step back into the storm.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Green's debut epic fantasy and series launch offers a welcome combination of horror elements, including numerous shocking deaths, and fascinating mythology involving animalistic deities. The Ferron Empire is thrown into turmoil following the deaths of Lothal, the god-wolf, and his master, the Emperor, whom he'd served by holding the excesses of the Empire's subjects in check. Now the land is beset by rotstorms, "clouds of jet black infused with streaks of gleaming purple lightning that cast a pulsing glow over the rolling landscape." The precipitation changes people into crow-men, creatures "with arcane power and horrifying appetites." Floré, a Stormguard veteran, survives battling the crow-men, only to encounter another daunting threat: glowing, wagon-sized orbs appear in the sky above her village of Hasselberry, and their manifestations coincides with the disappearances of the town's animals, some of whom resurface as mutilated corpses. When her daughter is the next to disappear, Floré is forced back into action. The unrelentingly dark tone enables Green to maintain a high level of suspense throughout. Fans of Anthony Ryan will welcome this and its sequels.
