Mordew
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Alex Pheby's Mordew launches an astonishingly inventive epic fantasy trilogy.
God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew.
In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.
The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength—and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it.
So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him—and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The impressive first in a Dickensian epic fantasy trilogy from Pheby (Lucia)makes its U.S. debut, putting a young thief at the mercy of supposed benefactors gunning for him due to his mysterious family connections. The city of Mordew, its name derived from "Mort Dieu" and built atop a divine corpse, was created and is controlled by a man called the Master, who is locked in perpetual war with his rival, the Mistress. Thirteen-year-old Nathan Treeves grows up in Mordew's slums, where, in his quest to obtain medicine for his dying father, he is recruited by the crime lord Mr. Padge and rounded up to work with other slum boys by the Fetch, an agent of the Master. Though he's warned not to use his inherited magic Spark, Nathan employs his powers to raid the mansions of the wealthy and gain access to the Master—who gives Nathan the task of killing the Mistress. Pheby sharply observes the ways in which power creates, corrupts, and is amalgamated from ancestor to descendant, and while his unsparing dissection of the sinews of society call to mind the fantasies of Jack Vance and China Miéville, here there's more cold intellect and less sympathetic heart than within those works. Readers who enjoy intricate worldbuilding and morally gray characters would do well to snap this up.
