The Shadow Academy

In a world little more than a whisper away from ours, the islands of Grand Brittannia lie just off the shores of the deeply forested content of Evropa, the dark and forbidding realm of legends scarcely remembered.

Grand Brittannia, itself almost completely a place of deep forest and mystery, has at its heart the crumbling, anachronistic administrative city of Londonborough. From here the Central Authority wields power over the Islands and exercises its control rigidly and clinically. Since the rigours of the Plague Wars, some hundred years in the past, when almost the entire population of the world was wiped out and the gradual decline of civilization began, industry and technology have atrophied, their development now strictly vetted by the Authority.

Out on the far-flung coasts, a network of ancient fortress ports wait in readiness for an invasion that some say will never come, their ancient, declining Academies committed to the rigours of training the defenders of the Islands. These Academies are subjected to regular inspections by Enforcers from Londonborough, and their native inhabitants are constantly being swelled by the young military graduates from the Authority's own Military Academies in the centre.

Into a cauldron of intrigue and subterfuge that is the town and Academy of Petra comes Chad Mundy, the Authority's replacement for Drew Vasillius, a veteran teacher who has committed suicide. At least, that is what he's been told...

Cole's previous works include four novels published in England by Robert Hale. The novel Madness Emerging had a distinctly Lovecraftian flavour, set in a small Cornish village (based on one in which he had lived for five years) overrun by an alien force. He then had two young adults fantasy novels published in England, Moorstones and The Sleep of Giants, the first one set on Dartmoor, the second in the South West. A number of fantasy series followed, including The Omaran Saga and Star Requiem, as well as the novelizations of his stories about the Voidal, a S and S character and his elemental sidekick, Elfloq the Familiar. He edited a collection of Lin Carter's short stories about Thongor of Lemuria and the book, Young Thongor. His novel Night of the Heroes envisions various superheroes forming an unlikely union to battle an evil genius. He has had short stories published in the Year's Best Fantasy series (DAW Books) and Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and he was once nominated for the former Balrog Award. His story "Dark Destroyer" was included in the anthology Swords Against the Millennium. His first shared-world novel was The Crimson Talisman, which is set in the realm of Eberron. Cole has worked as a librarian, an administrator in education, and Director of Resources in a large secondary college in the town of Bideford, North Devon, where he lives with his wife Judy, son Sam, and daughter Katia in an old blacksmith's forge.