Nightsword
A Starshield Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Thousands of years ago, the mad emperor Lokan controlled the Nightsword--and imposed his twisted desires on all that lived. Then Lokan mysteriously vanished behind the Maelstrom Wall, into the quantum chaos of the galactic core. But legend says that somewhere behind the Wall, the Nightsword is hidden, its awesome energies waiting to be used again . . . for good or evil.
When Earther astronaut Jeremy Griffiths donned the Mantle of Kendis-Dai and became blessed--and perhaps cursed--with infinite knowledge, he learned the exact direction of Lokan's ill-fated route. And now the secrets stored in his head have made him the target of everyone who has ever coveted the Nightsword for their own ends. Griffiths wants only to get his crew safely home to Earth--and to impress the bewitching, bewildering Merinda Neskat. Yet he is caught firmly in the middle of galactic agendas beyond his control, and this new quest will prove to be the challenge of a lifetime . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Avast, ye Earthlubbers! Weis and Hickman are launching a new star pirate voyage in their Starshield series, trying to revive characters already sagging in The Mantle of Kendis-Dai. According to their 3000-year-old myth, galactic superhero Kendis-Dai used the Nightsword, a "selective causality device," to force his mystico-scientifc empire into one huge human-dominated quantum zone. Stolen first by arch-villain Lokan and now sought by a motley collection of Earth astronauts, multiracial space pirates and assorted Inquisitors led by Targ, an Oedipal misfit, the Nightsword promises infinite power to its possessor. Merinda Neskat, heroine of this neo-Trekkie saga, lurches from one purportedly fatal encounter to another, plying her wiles alternately on effete U.S. astronaut Jeremy Griffiths and hunky pirate captain Evon Flynn in a predictably eternal triangle. Though Weis and Hickman struggle to make each life-form group speak its own comical variety of English, all characterizations in this exponentially inflated comic book are equally lackluster. When Merinda for the nth time skewers the tepidly malignant Targ, the appropriate reaction is not a bang for the bucks the book costs but a whimper of relief that it's over--for the time being. Author tour.