Requirements: .ePUB reader, 2MB
Overview: I’m a retired medieval historian who is now busy taking apart the Middle Ages and reassembling them into an alternate history world called Altearth. And published a novelette, "Mad House", two novels–"Goblins at the Gates" and "A Child of Great Promise", and two short stories–"The Roadmaster" and "The Carrotfinger Man." "The Roadmaster" was selected as an Editor’s Choice at Bewildering Stories for 2012. Two thousand years in which magic is real, monsters roam, and the Roman Empire never fell. I have degrees in medieval and in early modern European history and taught at the university level for forty years. I also worked in IT, first in computer support then as a university webmaster and finally as a web developer. My working career was a combination of both history and computers.
Genre: Fiction > Sci-Fi/Fantasy
1. A Child of Great Promise
A girl who can fly sets out to find the parents who abandoned her. As she travels from the marshlands of southern Gaul to the Pirinaeus Mountains, she is befriended by gardiens and routiers, a human troubador, and an elf chevalier, but she is also pursued by a wizard who believes she holds the secret to an ancient power. She must discover the truth about her past if she is ever to have a future.
2. Goblins at the Gates
A quarter million goblins swarm at the edge of the Roman Empire. The best hope of stopping them lies with a Roman aristocrat who hates the army but who finds himself in command of a border legion, and a barbarian princess who has been exiled from her tribe for using magic. Everyone is swept up in the calamity, including a love-sick boy who makes water statues, an outcast named Fist, and a little girl with a war dog. All will be needed; not all will survive.
2.5 Mad House
The ogre John Golly and his partner Quinn-the-Sprite steal an island. Accidentally.
In Altearth, the wizards of the Chapterhouses are among the most powerful magicians in the land. Those of the Chapterhouse of the Black Isle are the envy of the world, for they have their Library, which houses secrets as deep as the ocean itself. Then some fool locked it.
Not the ordinary sort of locking, for which there are keys and spells; no, this wretch of a novice was digging around in place he shouldn’t even have been looking at, and he has set off the emergency lock, a thing not done for centuries.
It has been so long since the emergency lock was set, no one remembers how to unset it. The more the wizards tried to unlock it, the more locked it became. What do you do when no key works and no spell prevails?
You call upon Quinn of Clan Five, the master of locks. Because he is a sprite, he can’t be trusted any farther than you can catapult him. So you frame him for a capital crime, then offer him a pardon if he will unlock the Library. To make sure he doesn’t steal any secrets, you put the faithful ogre, John Golly, to watch over him.
All will be well. Except that Quinn-the-Sprite does not intend to leave empty handed. John Golly used to be a tunneler in the service of a mercenary army, and Quinn used to be a tunneler as well, so Quinn figures the ogre will help out a brother.
But the House has been talking to John Golly. Something is wrong with the House itself, and the problem lies deep within the Library. The wizards want Quinn to unlock the door and leave, but John Golly and the House want him to go much further. Quinn just wants to make off with a treasure that will set him up for life. And to keep his life.
Wizards, sprites, ogres and a talking house. It might have all worked out, if it weren’t for the storm. The storm changed everything. But they did not know Quinn and John Golly had been tunnelers in mercenary bands. Nor did they know the House wanted John Golly to do it a favor. And no one could have anticipated the storm.
3. Into the Second World
Gabrielle Lauten longs to be taken seriously as a scientific journalist. Her big chance comes when she joins an expedition in search of an explorer lost in the deepest cave in the world.
When she and her four companions plunge far into the heart of the planet, they discover a lost world and a civilization that doesn’t want to be found.
Now Gabrielle, along with a professor and his adventurer nephew, along with an ogre and a dwarf, must find a way to escape a world filled with powerful magic, fearsome monsters, and a race of elves who would keep them trapped forever in the Second World.
Download Instructions:
Ellis Knox – Altearth.zip – 1.9 MB
Mirror:
https://ouo.io/BDgO8P
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