The Sword of Straw
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Embark upon a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight. . . .
Parallel universes and grave danger are nothing new to Nathan Ward. During his last mission, he risked life and limb to retrieve the Grail for safekeeping. But Nathan’s adventures are just beginning. Lately his dreams have been transporting him to a desolate city whose people have fled—save for a sickly king and his daughter, Princess Nell. In their decaying hilltop castle, they live in the shadow of a terrifying curse inflicted by a sword that holds within its gleaming metal an ancient demon conjured by the universe’s most powerful wizard. It is a sword that brings death to anyone who dares to draw it from its sheath.
But the king is dying, and the legend claims that only a stranger can save him . . . and that this stranger alone is destined to awake—and defeat—the dark evil in the sword. But who among mortals and spirits could ever imagine that a boy materializing into alternate worlds still dressed in his pajamas could be the chosen one . . . the one entrusted with the long-lost plan to retrieve the Grail relics and save a dying cosmos?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The charming and sometimes cheeky second installment in Hemingway's Sangreal trilogy (after 2005's The Greenstone Grail) borrows from a wide range of contemporary and classic fantasy, including Michael Moorcock's multiverse and Arthurian legend, but has delightful touches uniquely its author's own. Nathan Ward, the series' now 13-year-old English hero, can dream himself into other worlds, where he must retrieve a trio of hidden "Grail relics." Older and wiser, Nathan finds his first romance with an atypical princess in dire straits, deals with a not-quite-ordinary bully at school and faces danger in his quest for a sword that slays anyone who draws it from its scabbard. Puberty distances Nathan from his sisterly sidekick, Hazel Bagot, who has problems of her own as she attempts to attract love with witchcraft. This spellbinding adventure will leave readers enthusiastically awaiting the third book, which promises answers to myriad mysteries.