Farlander (Heart of the World) - Softcover

Col Buchanan

3.4

1,920 ratings by Goodreads

9780330511889: Farlander (Heart of the World)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330511882 ISBN 13: 9780330511889

Publisher: Tor Books, 2011

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The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators. The Mercian Free Ports are the only confederacy yet to fall. Their only land link to the southern continent, a long and narrow isthmus, is protected by the city of Bar-Khos. For ten years now, the great southern walls of Bar-Khos have been besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army. Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the Roshun - who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink. When the Holy Matriarch's son deliberately murders a woman under the protection of the Roshun; he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfil the Roshun orders their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports ...into bloodshed and death.

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About the Author:

Colin Buchanan was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1973. The one constant in his life has been his love of writing. It was writing that lead him to his adopted home of Lancaster, England, where he gained a First in Creative Writing & Religious Studies at the University of Cumbria. In recent years he has mostly settled down, and loves nothing more than a late-night gathering around a fire with good friends. Farlander is the first in his fantasy series.

From Booklist:

With his debut novel, Buchanan fashions a fantasy-based realm called The Heart of the World, which relies less on the genre’s usual staple of sorcery and curious creatures than on the author’s impressive skill at fleshing out characters. Nico is a street urchin living hand to mouth in the tyrannical Empire of Mann’s capital city when he’s caught stealing red-handed and then given a hard-to-refuse opportunity to redress his crimes by becoming an apprentice. His alternately terrifying and exhilarating new trade, however, is that of a Roshun, or assassin, and his mentor is an aging warrior named Ash, who’s approaching the end of his life and career. When the Prince of Mann murders a woman who falls under the Roshun order’s protection, it falls to Nico and Ash to carry out a morally dubious and death-defying vendetta. While Buchanan’s inexperience is visible with a sagging midsection and inconsistent pacing, the tale ends with some rousing action and a startling plot twist that cleverly hooks the reader for the author’s planned sequel. --Carl Hays

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