Dante's Heart

One day, homo sapiens will burn half the universe—and after, our descendants will cross billions of light years to atone and forget.In the pages of Dante's Heart, join Mara the naiad, the monster-hunter Dante, Fang Yu the cyborg knight and her lover Siwatu the necromancer, and Azar Almasi the intergalactic geneticist (and deity) as they search the universe for the secret of violence.From a foot-trek through forests made of glass, to the pools where the tadpoles of dragons are born, from alien planetscapes to pitched battles in the silent dark between the stars, who will survive humanity's last pilgrimage?This lavish, full-color edition includes 20 illustrations and 9 sketches by artists Roberto Calas, Chaz Kemp, and Frankie Serna.EARLY REVIEWS FOR DANTE'S HEART"Dante's Heart is like Clive Barker, Octavio Paz, and Dante Alighieri are playing D&D together. Lush stuff and more imaginative than most fantasy fare." - Marc McDermott"Dante's Heart isn't as much a story as it is an epic poem. Visually and emotionally evocative, it seems to be this gifted author's heartfelt rumination on pain, loss, and the human propensity toward violence. To read it is to step through an oil painting into another world. But beware: Once there, you may have trouble finding your way back out. Not that you'll necessarily want to, because Dante's Heart is both terrifyingly and achingly beautiful." – Michael Whiteman JonesREVIEWS FOR STANT LITORE'S PREVIOUS FICTION"Heartbreaking and wonderful." – Conflictium"I find myself riveted to Stant's prose, not only because I'm eager to find out the characters' fate but because his words are so beautiful. The story has stayed with me days after reading it. I highly recommend." – Denise Grover Swank, author of The Curse Keepers"To say I loved this book would be an understatement. I could not put it down." – The Seattle Post-Intelligencer"Stant Litore may be SF's premier poet of loneliness." – Jason Kirk, author of Reverb and The Other Whites in South Africa"Litore's stories aren't only entertaining. They are stories invading our lives, unexpectedly. You encounter them, as you might encounter people. They are those random elements in life that happen to you, like a mugging, like childbirth, like falling in love and marriage, like death and the funeral that follows. They are moments that leave a mark, and leave you changed." – Andrew Hallam, Ph.D., Metropolitan State University of Denver"Stant eloquently writes passages that are so moving, full of passion, fury, loneliness, blind drive … He takes us to places of amazing beauty, awe-inspiring, as well as places where the implications in the story can leave you almost in despair for the human race." – Nikki Ebright, Director, Shiny Garden