Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king. War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die. Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king. War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed, thrown down a mountain and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die. Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

By:   Joe Abercrombie
Imprint:   Gollancz
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Edition:   Export ed
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 37mm
Weight:   716g
ISBN:  

9780575082465

ISBN 10:   0575082461
Series:   (First Law Universe)
Pages:   544
Publication Date:   June 2009
Audience:   General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock  
Our supplier is currently out of stock. You can order it and we will ship it to you upon arrival.

Joe Abercrombie is a freelance film editor living in London with his family.

Can there be a true marriage of particle physics and psychedelia? Can an Esalen-inspired seminar on physics yield insights into Zen, enlightenment, or other transcendental phenomena? Gary Zukav sounds an emphatic yes as he explains how he, physicist David Finkelstein (Yeshiva University), and Al Chung-Liang Huang, a T'ai Chi master who was leading a workshop at Esalen, met over dinner and evolved the concept of dancing Wu Li masters. Huang explained that physics was called Wu Li back in Taiwan where he learned it. And Wu Li means patterns of organic energy. It also means My Way, Nonsense, I Clutch My Ideas, and Enlightenment (used as chapter titles in the book). The dance is what physics masters do who elaborate theories and deal with the absurdities that sometimes characterize quantum physics. (Light as particle and wave, for example, the notion of spin when there is no spin. . . .) With this as theme, Zukav takes off to explain special and general relativity theory and the evolution of ideas in contemporary physics down to the current embarrassment of riches in particles with their various strange properties (including strangeness). When he sticks to Einstein thought experiments or simple examples not unlike those used in Gamow or Hoyle, the text is all right. Where the reader has cause for despair is in Zukav's enthusiastic jumps to Zen, right-left brain differences, Freud - or when he indulges in endless puns and uses his favorite foil for explanation, Jim de Wit. Pared of these excesses, this might be a good popularization. But that would be to eliminate just the East-West bridges Zukav wants to build. (Kirkus Reviews)