Ikki and his friends are at a joint training camp with Kyomon Academy to prepare for the Seven Stars Battle Festival. But while they’re away, mysterious assailants suddenly attack Hagun. They claim to be part of a group known as Akatsuki, and their strength is overwhelming. As everyone races back to confront them, something catches them off guard—they’ve been betrayed. To make matters worse, Ikki ends up confronting the world’s strongest Blazer. Will he be able to survive the encounter?
One of the earliest great stories of English literature after ?Beowulf?, ?Sir Gawain? is the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts King Arthur's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging the knights to a wager. Simon Armitrage, one of Britain's leading poets, has produced an inventive and groundbreaking translation that " helps] liberate ?Gawain ?from academia" (?Sunday Telegraph?).
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.
What does it mean to be a man? When a culture fails to answer that properly, the results can be disastrous. For men it can lead to broken identity, overcrowded prisons, spousal abuse, gang violence, chemical addiction and aggressive, anti-social tendencies that wreck havoc all over the world. For women it can mean living in a suppressed environment where involvement is marginalized. Using medieval chivalry as a springboard, this book leads the reader into a thought-provoking quest for values long ignored. By incorporating freedom, personal authenticity, democracy and equality (including feminism), this new form of chivalry is entirely relevant for today's world.
Writer versus artist!With Itsuki Hashima’s novel series All About My Little Sister being awarded both an anime and a manga adaptation, it’s full-steam ahead for his brand name! But Kaiko Mikuniyama, the artist selected by unanimous vote to handle the manga adaptation, has an unbelievable secret—one that develops into a full-fledged fracas that sucks in Puriketsu, Nayuta Kani, and even totally normal college student Miyako Shirakawa. Will Itsuki manage to rider the mixed-media wave and keep his sanity in the process? And are changes on the horizon for his relationship with Nayuta...?
