The Silk Map
A Gaunt and Bone Novel
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
It's Brent Weeks meets China Mieville in this wildly imaginative fantasy adventure featuring high action, elegant writing, and sword and sorcery with a Chinese flare. At the end of The Scroll of Years, the poet Persimmon Gaunt and her husband, the thief Imago Bone, had saved their child from evil forces at the price of trapping him within a pocket dimension. Now they will attempt what seems impossible; they will seek a way to recover their son. Allied with Snow Pine, a scrappy bandit who's also lost her child to the Scroll of Years, Gaunt and Bone awaken the Great Sage, a monkeylike demigod of the East, currently trapped by vaster powers beneath a mountain. The Sage knows of a way to reach the Scroll -- but there is a price. The three must seek the world's greatest treasure and bring it back to him. They must find the worms of the alien Iron Moths, whose cocoons produce the wondrous material ironsilk. And so the rogues join a grand contest waged along three thousand miles of dangerous and alluring trade routes between East and West. For many parties have simultaneously uncovered fragments of the Silk Map, a document pointing the way toward a nest of the Iron Moths. Our heroes tangle with Western treasure hunters, a blind mystic warrior and his homicidal magic carpet, a nomad princess determined to rebuild her father's empire, and a secret society obsessed with guarding the lost paradise where the Moths are found -- even if paradise must be protected by murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This rich sequel to The Scroll of Years finds intrepid thief Imago Bone and poet Persimmon Gaunt teaming up with wily bandit Snow Pine to rescue their children, lost in a secret pocket dimension that's been hidden within the magical Scroll of Years. Striking a bargain with a monkey goddess called the Great Sage, the trio sets off on an epic search for the rare caterpillars that are the source of tough ironsilk. Along the way, they will face amazing challenges: battling mummies and invisible warriors, contending with haunted cities, encountering rivals aboard a hot air balloon. Despite some dense writing, this Chinese-inflected fantasy adventure romps along at a madcap pace, with frequent detours to include the thoughts of peripheral characters including an overcoat and a magic carpet. This lighthearted story is suitable for teen readers as well as adults.