The Aurora Award-winning author of the Man of His Word novels returns
to the magical realm of Pandemia with the first in his Handful of Men
series.
For fifteen years, Queen Inos and King Rap--the former stable boy and
secret sorcerer--have ruled Krasnegar wisely and happily, raising a
family and prospering in their remote little kingdom.
But a darkness is encroaching, foreshadowed by prophecies of unimagined
cataclysms across Pandemia. Prince Emshandar, better known as Shandie to
Krasnegar's royal family, is engaged in several conflicts along the
Impire's borderlands, as armies of djinns, gnomes, and other races
declare and wage war. His grandfather, the aged imperor himself,
continues to behave more erratically and tyrannically with each passing
hour.
Rap dismisses the warnings as superstitious nonsense and the borderland
battles as far from home and none of his kingdom's affair. But on the
night of the birth of his fourth child, Rap is visited by a god who
regales him with a cryptic tale of Pandemia's impending doom. Once upon
a time, a young sorcerer made an error, an error that now threatens to
nullify the Protocol, the treaty that has controlled the use of magic
for a millennium. Without the Protocol, the realm will fall into chaos
and certain destruction--unless Rap embarks on a dangerous quest to
right his long ago wrong . . .
The beginning of a new series by the author of the Seventh Sword novels
and many other acclaimed works of fantasy, The Cutting Edge is "deftly
woven and set forth with a refreshingly unpretentious clarity and
directness: imagine David Eddings rewritten by Kate Wilhelm. Grab this
one" (Kirkus Reviews).
