Stone in the Skull: The Lotus Kingdoms, Book One: 1 - Tapa blanda

Praise for The Stone in the Skull "Elizabeth Bear sweeps the reader into a world of ravishing detail."--Huffington Post "Amazing worldbuilding, gloriously precise prose, and excellent pacing."--Tor.com "The Eternal Sky trilogy is one of the great fantasy epics of the last decade, and Bear triumphantly returns to that setting."--Library Journal "Glorious and dramatic."--Publishers Weekly, starred review "The plot hews closely to the whole band-of-rogues-assemble-to-fight-stronger-band-of-foes . . . Bear noodles around that trope like a jazz master and takes the story to some interesting places . . ."--Locus "This is a promising beginning indeed for an epic . . . and it will no doubt be a magnificent journey."--Booklist "A panoramic drama that grabs and grips from Page 1 . . . vivid, absorbing, and thrilling."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Clever and beautifully written."--Elitist Book Reviews "A thoughtful, richly complex, humane work eloquently told and elegantly constructed."--Fantasy Literature "Enchanting."--The Illustrated Page "A beautifully written story, truly epic in scope."--Lynn's Book Blog Praise for the Eternal Sky trilogy "Subtle . . . crisp."--RT Book Reviews Top Pick for Range of Ghosts "A vivid world." --Publishers Weekly on Range of Ghosts "A rousing, artful adventure."--Asimov's Science Fiction on Shattered Pillars "Astonishing."--Booklist on Shattered Pillars "Bear delivers the thematic complexity, deft worldbuilding, and compelling storytelling we've come to expect in this concluding volume of the Eternal Sky trilogy, set in a world inspired by 13th-century Asia and The Arabian Nights."--Locus on Steles of the Sky "Dense, gripping, and also entertaining, full of emotion, adventure, loss, and the possibility of hope."--Tor.com on Steles of the Sky

This first volume of a new Eternal Sky trilogy takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south, into the Lotus Kingdoms. The Gage, a brass automaton created by a long-dead wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being, works as a mercenary. He carries 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 bodyguard 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.