Mageworlds

7 primary works

The Price of the Stars

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 15 October 1992

Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka Rosselin-Metadi doesn't want to hear about how her father whose rugged general ship held back the Mageworlds -- or her highborn mother whose leadership has held the galaxy together since. Beka pilots spacecraft -- as far from her famous family as possible.Then Beka's mother is assassinated on the Senate floor, and her father offers her the title to Warhammer, prize ship from his own freebooting youth -- if she agrees to deliver the assassins to him "off the books."Looking for assassins has a tendency to make assassins look for you. In doing so, Beka's arranged her own very public death and adopted a new identity; now all she has to do is leave a trail of kidnappings and corpses across five star systems, and blow the roof off the strongest private fortress in the galaxy.

Starpilot's Grave

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 15 June 1993

A broken and drifting ship, its long-dead captain still strapped in the command seal: that's what free-spacers call a starpilot's grave. When one of these derelict craft appears in the Net, the artificial barrier zone separating the Republic from the Mageworlds, the discovery is no accident. It's a sign, a warning that the Mageworlds have not forgotten the Republic - and the Magelords make long plans.

By Honor Betray'd

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 15 July 1994

Galcen has fallen. The Space Force is broken and scattered. The planets of the former Republic are rushing to make peace with the victorious Mages.

The Gathering Flame

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 15 July 1995

First their scoutships appeared above the outplanets. Raiding parties followed, then whole armadas bent on loot and conquest. The Mages break the warfleets that oppose them. They take entire planets. Who can stop them?

The Long Hunt

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 15 August 1996

Welcome to Khestat, glittering jewel of the Central Worlds. Khestat, where decadence is an art form, and intrigue is a way of life -- and where, more than twenty years after the second Magewar, power struggles within the ruling family threaten both the Mageworlds and the Republic.

The Khesatan crisis has broken the spaceways apart, reviving old alliances and buried rivalries. Waring factions, criminal guilds, and supranormal forces all have their eyes turned toward Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin, only to the scapegrace brother of the current -- and childless -- Highest of Khesat, and whomever controls Khesat controls the galaxy.

Jens doesn't know that he's the first item on a long rollcall of agendas. He's off to see the galaxy in company with his cousin Faral. They're looking for excitement and adventure. Before the dust settles, they'll fet more of both than they bargained for.

And the civilized galaxy may never be the same again.

The Stars Asunder

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 1 June 1999

The star systems of the Mages are linked by magic. Only when trained Mages have found a Way to a new planet can the great colonizing and trading starships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is the great gap, beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the Mages' trade.

Working of Stars

by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald

Published 1 April 2002

Since the publication of THE PRICE OF THE STARS, Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald's Mageworlds novels have been among the finest swashbuckling SF adventures in the field. In the most recent volume, THE STARS ASUNDER, Arekhon sus - Khalgath, sus-Peledaen abandoned his native planet for a new life on the far side of the Gap Between - the starless rift separating the Eraasian worlds from the rest of the galaxy. Now, on the planet Entibor, he has found shelter and domestic tranquillity with his old love, Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he may have left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaval. Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and prophetic visions. The Great Working - the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite a galaxy long sundered by the Gap Between - remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the dissolution of Arekhon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured into the Working already; and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive and bound into it.