Elizabeth Bear‘s The Stone in the Skull begins a new trilogy set in the author’s critically-acclaimed Eternal Sky trilogy, and “takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.” Now, I haven’t read the Eternal Sky trilogy, but I’ve heard many people say it’s great. Here’s the new book’s synopsis:
The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.
They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.
The Stone in the Skull is due to be published by Tor Books in October 2017. The Eternal Sky trilogy is also published by Tor Books, and is available in the UK.
Civilian Reader 