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3.5 

The Stone in the Skull

By Elizabeth Bear
The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Hugo Award–winning author Elizabeth Bear returns to her critically acclaimed epic fantasy world of the Eternal Sky with a brand new trilogy.

Best SFF Books 2017—The Guardian
Kirkus
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017

The Verge Recommended Fantasy for 2017
Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List

The Stone in the Skull, the first volume in her new trilogy, takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.

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 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 Lotus Kingdoms
#1 The Stone in the Skull
#2 The Red-Stained Wings

The Eternal Sky Trilogy
#1 Range of Ghosts
#2 Shattered Pillars
#3 Steles of the Sky

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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23 Reviews

3.5
“Unsure if I’d recommend it based on the writing alone. Even though I put it down multiple times due to not being engaged, I found myself wanting to finish the story or thinking about the environment/imagery. The characters were likeable, unique, diverse. The ending did have me 😯 for one second, just one. :-) Anytime in a movie/book the title is said or referenced I kick my feet and giggle like a kid. Chapter 3, first paragraph, is about 1/4th of the page long and only 4 sentences. There are sentences in this book that are so ridiculously long you have to take notes to follow the sentence. I’m not keen on authors using niche vocab/extremely uncommon words, seemingly just to “elevate” the writing. The story is slow-paced, vocabulary is advanced, and the writing is dense. Story is very detailed, bordering on too-many-details-i-dont-really-care.”
“Rep: Indian-coded cast, transfem mc, bi transmasc mc, nonbinary side character”

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