Majestrum: Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, Book One - Hardcover

Hughes, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597800619 ISBN 13: 9781597800617

Publisher: Night Shade, 2006

Synopsis

Sherlock Holmes meets Jack Vance’s Dying Earth in Majestrum, the explosive new novel from Matthew Hughes, acclaimed author of Black Brillion, Fools Errant, and The Gist Hunter and Other Stories.

The scientific method and a well-calibrated mind have long served freelance discriminator Henghis Hapthorn, allowing him to investigate and solve the problems of the wealthy and powerful aristocracy of Old Earth, and securing him a reputation for brilliance across The Spray and throughout the Ten Thousand Worlds. But the universe is shifting, cycling away from logic and reason and ushering in a new age of sympathetic association, better known as magic.

This change is evidenced by the unexplained transformation of Henghis Hapthorn’s personal electronic integrator into a small fruit-eating creature. Odder still, Hapthorn’s personality has been cleaved into two distinct beings sharing one body: himself, familiar and appropriate to the rational old order; and the other, strange, intuitive, and obsessed with an arcane and untranslated tome, appropriate to the new.

When Hapthorn is hired by Lord Afre to investigate the motives of his daughter’s new companion, a young man of indeterminate circumstances, he takes the job expecting it to allow him the opportunity to explore and understand his changing universe. Little does Henghis Hapthorn realize, but the path of discovery will lead to deeper questions, a mysterious assignment from the Archon himself, and the ancient and powerful secret name... Majestrum!

About this title

About the Author

From Booklist

Until now, Hughes' erudite master detective, Hengis Hapthorn, has appeared only in a handful of tales recently collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories (2005). Renowned on Old Earth and throughout the Ten Thousand Worlds as the galaxy's foremost discriminator (i.e., private eye), Hapthorn is the far future's answer to Sherlock Holmes. After a thorny case involving demons and magical forces, Hapthorn finds himself saddled with an extra voice, personifying his intuition, inside his head. This alter ego becomes both boon and annoyance during a pair of cases that interconnect when a routine investigation into the true motives of a wealthy debutante's suitor gives way to a manhunt for an evildoer plotting to overthrow the ruling archon of Old Earth. Somehow intertwined with both pursuits is an indecipherable magical book with which the alter ego is obsessed to the point of threatening to relegate Hapthorn to a backseat in his own mind. Hughes artfully blends wit, colorful characterizations, and intriguing plot twists in a compelling yarn that detective-novel readers may like, too. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Night Shade
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1597800619
• ISBN 13: 9781597800617
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256