Sherlock Holmes meets Jack Vance's Dying Earth in Hespira, the new novel from Matthew Hughes, acclaimed author of Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and The Gist Hunter and Other Stories.
As magic continues to reassert its ancient dominion, replacing rationalism as the fundamental underpinning of the universe, Old Earth's foremost freelance discriminator, Henghis Hapthorn, and his intuition (now a separate person named Osk Rievor) are living apart, though they remain on good terms.
But now into Hapthorn's life comes a woman of mystery. Who is Hespira? Who has sent her to lure Hapthorn on a quest across the Ten Thousand Worlds? And to what final, fateful choice will she bring him?
"If the plots weren't so compelling, if the worlds he creates weren't so sparklingly original, I could read about Henghis Hapthorn going to the grocery store.... do yourself a favor and just pick up this novel and read the first few pages. Hughes' writing is a Rolls Royce Corniche convertible."
- Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column
"If you're an admirer of the science fantasies of Jack Vance, it's hard not to feel affection for the Archonate stories of Matthew Hughes... Still, Hughes has strengths of his own to draw upon: his own considerable wit, and a flair for reified metaphysics surpassing anything conceived by Vance."
- Nick Gevers, Locus
"Matt Hughes's boldness is admirable."
- The New York Review of Science Fiction
"A bit Arthur Conan Doyle, a bit Jack Vance.... Henghis's escapades [have] the lasting appeal of one of P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster books."
- Seattle Times
"Hughes's successful blend of magic, the supernatural and high-tech with Sherlockian deductions (and cryptic observations straight out of Doyle's canon) suggests a long life for Hapthorn."
- Publishers Weekly
Hardcover 978-1-59780-101-0
220 Pages $24.95
Limited Edition 978-1-59780-102-7
220 Pages $49.00 - Limited Edition Cancelled. |
