STORMRIDER

A first US publication for British fantasy author Gemmell continues the story begun in The Sword in the Stone, the initial installment in his Rigante saga. There, readers met the Rigante of Three Streams who worshipped the gods of Air and Water. Connavar, the Demonblade, a boy born in a storm that killed his father, had to help fight against the invading Armies of Stone. With Demonblade having become King of Rigante, Midnight Falcon told of the hardships of Bane, Connavar’s wildly bitter and vengeful bastard, who found acceptance only abroad. And now Stormrider underscores the author’s dark sense of war, as King Connavar and Bane defeat the Stone. Born 800 years later, Ravenheart (the soulname of Kaelin Ring) is the champion who may someday free the proud Rigante, now enslaved by the proud Varlish, led by the Moidart, murderous Lord of Eldacre Castle. But all will turn on Gaise Macon, known as Stormrider, who, as the son of the Moidart, gives deeply human complications to the plot. The evil Winter Kay, leader of the Knights of the Sacrifice, slaughters a whole village of peaceful worshippers of the Source and comes into possession of the Orb—a skull with an iron circlet on its brow—in a black box said to contain the Orb’s evil. A civil war, however, has begun while Stormrider leads the Moidart’s troops north, where Ravenheart, the champion of the Rigante, awaits him. Kaelin Ring adopts Feargol, soulname Moon Lantern, a six-year-old orphaned by a giant grizzly, and Feargol, who has the magic eye of foresight, will become Ghost Walker and foresee the rise of the next great army of darkness.

Will Ghost Walker destroy Stormrider in the next installment? Tune in tomorrow.