After a thousand years of peace, the Orbis - the Roman Galactic Empire that thought itself almighty - trembles down to its foundations. The Huns, savage warriors that came out of nowhere, are trying to conquer it. King Attila has already pillaged and burned dozens of planets without any legion being able to stop him or even slow him down. And unfortunately for Rome - Kerka, the Hun's goddess of chaos herself - is back. But the Gods have a taste for tragedy: Kerka has been reincarnated in the body of Flavia Aetia, a young Roman girl. Is Flavia truly this macabre divinity? Is she the by-product of a terrifying plot? Or is she only the victim of a terrible destiny?
The Barbarian North - AD450 Narrowly escaping the treacherous attack that killed his father, Halga Hunding treads the exile's path. Vowing vengeance, the young Jute forges a reputation as a warrior and a leader; but before he can act, a titanic struggle draws him south. Attila, king of the Huns, the scourge of God, leads a horde across the Rhine. A hundred thousand strong, they ravage the heartland of Roman Gaul - killing, and burning as they go. Flavius Aetius, Master of Soldiers, hurries north, gathering a host from all the kingdoms of the West. Halga battles at the eye of the storm as Western civilisation fights to survive, and in a lightning campaign of bloodshed and brutality the invaders are repulsed. Now a warrior of renown leading a troop of battle-hardened veterans, Halga sails for home, and the longed-for reckoning is at hand as he carefully baits a trap... PERFECT FOR FANS OF CONN IGGULDEN, BEN KANE AND MATTHEW HARFFY PRAISE FOR C.R.MAY BLOODAXE - ERIK HARALDSSON ...one of the most powerful trilogies in all Historical Fiction. SPEESH SWORD OF WODEN Entertaining and building into a really great trilogy. If you like Bernard Cornwell or Simon Scarrow, you will love this. KING'S BANE Savage and glorious... THE REVIEW
The Varanguard are the elite warriors of the Everchosen, those worthy of fighting by Archaon's side. When treachery strikes, Vanik, one such warrior, will stop at nothing to bring Archaon's vengeance to his foes. Archaon, the Everchosen, is the most powerful and feared of all the great Champions of the Dark Gods. Warlords of immense cruelty, who have waged innumerable campaigns of suffering and slaughter, thirst to fight by his side. Such Knights of Ruin are known as the Varanguard. Though Vanik the Black Pilgrim’s blade drips with the blood of conquered empires, he is yet to prove himself worthy of ascension into the Fifth Circle of the Varanguard. At last, he faces his final, nocuous quest: to hunt down and slay a legendary hero of Order that prophecies foretell will liberate the Mortal Realms from the stranglehold of Chaos. Yet when a betrayal strikes the very heart of the Varanspire, the great fortress of the Everchosen himself, it soon becomes clear to Vanik that Sigmar’s Chosen is not the only threat to Archaon’s reign. For Vanik, there will be only victory or oblivion. For he is a Varanguard, and no enemy of the Three-Eyed King will escape his blade, lest the Varanspire fall.
Magus leaves circle by the doorway, goes to Postulant, and says, "Since there is no other brother here, I must be thy sponsor, as well as priest. I am about to give you a warning. If you are still of the same mind, answer it with these words: 'Perfect Love and Perfect Trust.'" Placing the point of the sword to the Postulant's breast, he says, "O thou who standeth on the threshold between the pleasant world of men and the domains of the Dread Lords of the Outer Spaces, hast thou the courage to make the Assay? For I tell thee verily, it were better to rush on my weapon and perish miserably than to make the attempt with fear in thy heart." Postulant: "I have two Passwords: Perfect Love and Perfect Trust." Magus drops the sword point, saying, "All who approach with perfect love and perfect trust are doubly welcome." Going around behind her, he blindfolds her, then putting his left arm around her waist and his right arm around her neck, he pulls her head back, says, "I give you the 3rd password, a Kiss to pass through this dread Door," and pushes her forward with his body, through the doorway and into the circle. Once inside, he releases her saying, "This is the way all are first brought into the circle." Magus closes the doorway by drawing the point of the sword across it three times, joining all three circles, saying, "Agla, Azoth, Adonai," then drawing three pentacles to seal it. Magus guides Postulant to south of altar, and whispers, "Now there is the Ordeal." Taking a short piece of cord from the altar, he ties it around her right ankle, saying, "Feet neither bound nor free." Taking a longer cord, he ties her hands together behind her back, then pulls them up, so that the arms form a triangle, and ties the cord around her neck, leaving the end dangling down in front as a Cable Tow. With the Cable Tow in his left hand and the sword in his right hand, the Magus leads her sunwise around the circle to the east, where he salutes with the sword and proclaims, "Take heed, O Lords of the Watchtowers of the East, (name), properly prepared, will be made a Priestess and a Witch." Magus leads her similarly to the south, west, and north, making the proclamation at each quarter. , clasping Postulant around the waist with his left arm, and holding the sword erect in his right hand, he makes her circumambulate three times around the circle with a half-running, half-dancing step. He halts her at the south of the altar, and strikes eleven knells on the bell.
The sweeping story of one of the most notorious crusader knights, Reynald de Chatillon - a great Christian hero of the Second Crusade and one of the most hated figures in Islamic history.
With refreshing determination and hopeful grit, humanity activates a bold endgame against an alien invasion in the finale of a series heralded as “a modern classic” (Stephen Baxter) from “one of the finest writers the genre has produced” (Gareth L. Powell). Humanity is struggling to hold out against a hostile takeover by an alien race that claims to be on a religious mission to bring all sentient life to its God at the End of Time. But while billions of cocooned humans fill the holds of the Olyix’s deadly arkships, humankind is playing an even longer game than the aliens may have anticipated. From an ultra-secret spy mission to one of the grandest battles ever seen, no strategy is off the table. Will a plan millennia in the making finally be enough to defeat this seemingly unstoppable enemy? And what secrets are the Olyix truly hiding in their most zealously protected stronghold? With his trademark optimism about humanity’s tenacity and capacity for greatness, Peter F. Hamilton wraps up this brilliant saga with a bang—and reminds us why freedom of choice is the most important freedom there is.
Public interest in Adolf Hitler and all aspects of the Third Reich continues to grow as new generations ponder the moral questions surrounding Nazi Germany and its historical legacy. One aspect of Nazism that has not received sufficient attention from historians of the Third Reich is the doctrine's origins in the Thule Society and its covert activities. A Munich occult group with a political agenda, the Thule Society was led by Rudolf von Sebottendorff, a German commoner who had been adopted by nobility during a sojourn in the Ottoman Empire. After returning to Europe, Sebottendorff embraced a form of theosophy that stressed the racial superiority of Aryans. The Thule Society attempted to establish an anti-Semitic, working-class front for disseminating its esoteric ideas and founded the German Workers' Party, which Hitler would later transform into the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party. Several of the society's members eventually assumed prestigious posts in the Third Reich. David Luhrssen has written the first comprehensive study of the society's activities, its cultural roots, and its postwar ramifications in a historical-critical context. Both general readers and academics concerned with European cultural and intellectual history will find that Hammer of the Gods opens new perspectives on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe.
This is the story of M. Francisco Fabrigas, explorer, philosopher, heretical physicist, who took a shipful of children on a frightening voyage to the next dimension, assisted by a teenaged Captain, a brave deaf boy, a cunning blind girl, and a sultry botanist, all the while pursued by the Pope of the universe and a well-dressed mesmerist. Dark plots, demonic cults, murderous jungles, quantum mayhem, the birth of creation, the death of time, and a creature called the Sweety: all this and more waits beyond the veil of reality.
"A Wall Street Journal columnist for "Weekend Confidential" explores the hubris and ambition of Silicon Valley innovators who are changing the world, tracing the stories of three upstarts who left promising college educations in favor of developing billion-dollar ideas"--NoveList.
