Moonrise
Book Three of the Snowfall Trilogy
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Several hundred years after a change in the orbit of Jupiter sent the Earth into a new Ice Age, remnants of civilization battle over territory and technology.
A generation has passed since Sam Monroe defeated the Great Khan, became King of Middle Kingdom, and ushered in an era of peace and prosperity, a time when Middle Kingdom grew even more powerful, driven by trade and emerging technology. In a grand gesture, Sam and Queen Rachel adopted the young son of their former enemy and raised him as a prince, second only to the heir to Middle Kingdom's throne.
The accidental drowning deaths of the King and Queen trigger the assassination of the Crown Price. Bajazet, too, is attacked, lest he serve as a rallying point for those who support the royal family. Barely twenty, the once-pampered Bajazet flees for his life.
Stumbling through the forest, prey where he once was the hunter and with the usurper King's forces on his heels, Bajazet is rescued by a trio of genetically engineered "Persons": Richard, who is almost more bear than human; Nancy, a cunning little vixen; and Errol, whose very human exterior hides a weasel's cold, cruel heart.
Boston, buried under glacial ice, gave them life. Boston's perverted technology, used to conquer and oppress, seems almost like magic to the North Americans who are slowly dragging themselves back up the ladder of civilization. Now the rulers of Boston eye the chaos in Middle Kingdom and find it ripe for conquest.
Bajazet's new friends are plotting the frozen city's destruction. The one-time Prince, now a lonely warrior, has one choice---help destroy Boston, or die.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Smith's gritty conclusion to his trilogy (Snowfall; Kingdom River) set during an ice age 600 years from now, young Prince "Baj" Bajazet, formerly the adopted scion of the royal clan that rules the lower Mississippi Valley, is on the run. His foster parents have been murdered in a bloody regicide committed by local turncoats but engineered by the evil genetic engineers of New England's Boston. Bostonians have for years kidnapped women from various primitive tribes throughout the continent and bred them to produce half-human, half-animal chimeras for use as slave labor. The chimeras call themselves Moonrisers, and the Bostonians secure their loyalty by holding their mothers hostage in gulag-like breeding pens within the city. Patience, an escaped Pen-mother, joins the prince and others in an effort to overthrow Boston's regime of mad science and sordid apartheid. Smith's elided future-speak prose is often lyrical, but at times becomes convoluted to the point of obscurity especially when combined with his frequent use of extended scene-setting flashbacks. Nevertheless, he manages to evoke a feeling of alien otherness in this American landscape weirdly transformed by a fall from technological grace. With echoes of Hoban's Ridley Walker and Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, this one should appeal to readers who like their post-apocalypse tales brutal and poetic.
