Sunday, June 3, 2012

Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D Simak


A manuscript is stolen from a library & from a young man's obstinate questions emerges an answer of stupendous import as the quest for an elder civilization becomes a terrifying ordeal.

The Wastelands were a realm of magic where no one ventured. Along the borders, the Little People pursued their ancient ways. But the interior was populated by all the dread creatures of darkest legends. There the Hellhounds took their awful vengeance on any who dared violate their territory. There the Chaos Beast was dead but struggled still to give birth to something even more strange & incomprehensible. Mark Cornwall was forced to flee into the Wastelands to escape from Beckett, evil agent of the inquisition. There he was joined by Oliver the rafter goblin, Gil of the marshes, Hal & Coon of the Hollow Tree, Snively the gnome--& Mary, who could free the horn of a unicorn & said she was born in the Wastelands. Ahead lay unknown terror & perilous adventure. If they survived, there was the alien Caretaker with a message of Destiny. 


Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris


Harper Connelly has what you might call a strange job: she finds dead people. She can sense the final location of a person who's passed, and share their very last moment. The way Harper sees it, she's providing a service to the dead while bringing some closure to the living - but she's used to most people treating her like a blood-sucking leech. Traveling with her step-brother Tolliver as manager and sometime-bodyguard, she's become an expert at getting in, getting paid, and getting out fast. Because for the living it's always urgent - even if the dead can wait forever


Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh



At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. 



In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a free-spirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations. 

The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of China. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East itself, that makes Sea of Poppies so breathtakingly alive -- a masterpiece from one of the world’s finest novelists.