Shower of Stones
A Novel of Jeroun
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
The follow-up to Zachary Jernigan’s critically-acclaimed literary debut No Return.
At the moment of his greatest victory, before a crowd of thousands, the warrior Vedas Tezul renounced his faith, calling for revolt against the god Adrash, imploring mankind to unite in this struggle.
Good intentions count for nothing. In the three months since his sacrilegious pronouncement, the world has not changed for the better. In fact, it is now on the verge of dying. The Needle hangs broken in orbit above Jeroun, each of its massive iron spheres poised to fall and blanket the planet's surface in dust. Long-held truces between Adrashi and Anadrashi break apart as panic spreads.
With no allegiance to either side, the disgraced soldier Churls walks into the divided city of Danoor with a simple plan: murder the monster named Fesuy Amendja, and retrieve from captivity the only two individuals that still matter to her—Vedas Tezul, and the constructed man Berun. The simple plan goes awry, as simple plans do, and in the process Churls and her companions are introduced to one of the world’s deepest secrets: A madman, insisting he is the link to an ancient world, offering the most tempting lie of all... Hope.
Concluding the visceral, inventive narrative begun in No Return, Shower of Stones pits men against gods and swords against civilization-destroying magic in the fascinatingly harsh world of Jeroun.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jernigan returns to the science-fantasy world of Jeroun (introduced in No Return) to finish off what he began: killing a god. Adventurers Churls, Berun, and Vedas Tezul painfully extract themselves from earlier events and are soon swept up in another set of messy problems. Thanks to Vedas's infamous tirade against Jeroun's malevolent god, Adrash, the apocalypse is nigh, and mankind will soon be extinguished. But if a mysterious dragon-taming stranger is to be believed, the three warriors may possess enough power inside themselves to end Adrash's millennia-long rule. Jernigan employs hard-hitting and unflinching prose that's as concise as it is brutal. Those who enjoyed the intricate worldbuilding in No Return will appreciate an even greater panoramic view of Jeroun; those who preferred the gory battle scenes will not leave disappointed, either. The story feels too long for the skimpy page count, leading to some pacing problems, and it suffers from an occasionally maudlin romance and an unearned climax. Still, the ending is rife with possibilities for deeper analysis and future related works, and Jernigan's prose skill is sufficient to rank him among speculative fiction's rising stars.
