Snare
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A gripping fantasy adventure from the author of the Deverry series, set far in the future on the strangely beautiful but inhospitable planet Snare.
The Kazraks arrived eight hundred years ago from the Homelands, determined to found a pure society and live simple lives based on the teachings of the three prophets. But the despotic rule of the Great Khan leads a small band to take drastic action. Following information from Yarl Soutan, a mysterious sorcerer from the far away Cantons, Captain Idres Warkannan and his nephew Arkazo set off to find the Great Khan’s younger brother, Jezro, and bring him back to stage a coup. But first they must cross the purple grassy plains inhabited both by the peace-loving comnees, and by the terrifying ChaMeech, intelligent beasts who regularly raid their borders.
Meanwhile Zayn Hassan, a loyal member of the Chosen, the Great Khan’s deadly secret service, is well on his way to successfully infiltrating a comnee in order to cross the plains and the Great Rift safely. His mission is to follow Yarl Soutan and find out what he’s doing leading the devoutly religious Kazraks to the decadent Cantons. But he hasn’t bargained for the simple pleasure of life on the plains, or the attractions of Ammadin, the comnee’s fiercly independent spirit rider.
As both parties journey across the plains they come to realize that there is more at stake than their individual quests. Centuries-old falsehoods are gradually revealed as all the factions begin to see that their histories and identities are not what they thought they were.
Combining the dazzling invention of her SF with the gripping adventure of her bestselling Deverry series, Katharine Kerr has created a truly unique and thrilling literary fusion.
Reviews
‘A fantastic plot which turns a simple story into something far more original … a cracking read … engrossing’ SFX
‘Kerr traces complex emotional and intellectual relationships as they evolve amid the dangers and vivid wonders of a world you won’t soon forget’ Locus
‘An enjoyable, intelligent adventure’ David Langford, Amazon
‘Kerr does a marvellous job … a compelling standalone fantasy’ Dreamwatch
‘Kerr is a worldbuilder of the greatest ability and imagination’ The Alien Online
About the author
Born in Ohio, 1944. Moved to San Francisco Bay Area in 1962 and has lived there ever since. Katharine Kerr has read extensively in the fields of classical archaeology, and medieval and Dark Ages history and literature, and these influences are clear in her work. Her epic Deverry series has won widespread praise and millions of fans around the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Popular fantasy author Kerr (the Deverry series) once again crosses genres to deliver a large-scale SF adventure, with crowd-pleasing results. Three very different groups of human settlers go, not all willingly, to the planet Snare: a band of Islamic fundamentalists, a group of horse tribes and the pragmatic Cantons people. All descend on Snare's indigenous reptilian species the ChaMeech, and eight centuries of territorial and social turmoil follow. In Kazrajistan, the despotic Gemet Great Kahn rules the followers of the Third Prophet, but a secret rebel organization led by Captain Idres Warkannan seeks to restore the rightful heir, Jezro Kahn, long assumed murdered by Gemet. Warkannan sets out to find Jezro with his nephew Arkazo and Yarl Soutan, a renegade Cantons sorcerer, who claims to be searching for the lost Ark of the Covenant, the settlers' original ship. Meanwhile, suspicious of Soutan and Warkannan, Gemet sends Zahir Benumar, one of his elite warriors, to discover their plans. In the guise of a disgraced soldier, Zahir joins a horse tribe led by the inquisitive Spirit Rider Ammadin, hoping to use the tribe as cover while he follows Soutan's trail. Matters grow more complicated when a ChaMeech named Water Woman asks Ammadin's help and tells her of a powerful sorceress named Sibyl, who may be the last link between Snare's inhabitants and their distant past. Though the ending falls a little flat, Kerr masterfully manipulates the converging plot lines.
