From humble origins as tribal nomads in an area to the east of the Black Sea, the Mosul Empire has ascended to power through bloody hunger for conquest. Spurred on by the brutal theocracy of the Zhaithan, they worship, with fundamental cruelty, the ancient and baleful twin deities Ignir and Aksura. Forming an unholy alliance with the Teutons in the North and the Mameluke warlords in North Africa, the empire subjugated the Land of the Franks, and all of the Hispanic Peninsula, and have now set their sights on the New World. They have already brought down the Republic, of Greater Carolina and the Virginia Freestate. Only the Kingdom of Albany, controlling what would be New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, still stands, aided by the Norse Alliance. Argo Weaver, Huck Finn in a ruthlessly vicious world, comes from the back hills of East Virginia. Cordelia Bakeney, Scarlet O'Hara in a trench coat, is a Lady at the Court of Albany. Raphael Vega, part Goya, part Zorro, conscripted as grunt cannon-fodder, is a native of decimated Hispania. Jessamine, a Destiny's Child gone to hell, is the concubine of a Teuton colonel.
Together, they will form the Four and battle the Mosul's ultimate creation, the Dark Things, battlefield horrors with hideous and paranormal powers. The Four are aided by Yancey Slide, a strange man with many of the characteristics of Coyote, the Trickster.
- ISBN13 9780765345806
- Publish Date 7 February 2006 (first published 1 August 2004)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 13 December 2008
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Tor Books
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 416
- Language English