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Zusatztext “ Wit’ch Fire grabs at your heart and tears a little hole! then tears another! and another—a brutal and beautiful ride. I can’t put the book down!” —R. A. Salvatore “I loved every page of this book. Clemens has constructed a world of magic that’s never been seen before! with a cast of beings who are so engaging and entrancing that you never want the story to end.” —John Saul “Full of violence! magical pyrotechnics! and black-heared villains.” — Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor James Clemens was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1961. With his three brothers and three sisters, he was raised in the Midwest and rural Canada. He attended the University of Missouri and graduated with a doctorate in veterinary medicine in 1985. The lure of ocean, sun, and new horizons eventually drew him to the West Coast, where he established his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California. Wit'ch Fire is his first novel. Klappentext On a fateful night five centuries ago! three mages made a desperate last stand! sacrificing everything to preserve the only hope of goodness in the beautiful! doomed land of Alasea. Now! on the anniversary of that ominous night! a girl-child ripens into the heritage of lost power. But before she can even comprehend her terrible new gift! the Dark Lord dispatches his winged monsters to capture her and bring him the embryonic magic she embodies. Fleeing the minions of darkness! Elena is swept toward certain doom--and into the company of unexpected allies. There she forms a band of the hunted and the cursed! the outcasts and the outlaws! to battle the unstoppable forces of evil and rescue a once-glorious empire . . . The apple struck Elena on the head. In surprise, she bit her tongue, and her foot slipped off the next rung of the ladder. She fell the two yards to the hard ground and crushed a decayed apple, smearing sticky foulness over the seat of her new work clothes. "Careful there, Elena," Joach called from another ladder, the strap from his apple basket digging into his forehead. The basket on his back was almost full. She glanced to her own basket, its contents spilled across the orchard ground. With her face as red as the apple that had dropped on her, she stood, trying to reclaim as much dignity as possible. Wiping her brow, she looked to the sun, which was low on the horizon. Late afternoon shadows stretched toward her. Sighing, she gathered her stray fruit. The dinner bell would be ringing soon. And her basket, even reloaded, was only a bit over half full. Father would be angry. "Head in the clouds," he would accuse her. "Always slacking from real work." She had heard his words often enough. She placed a hand on the ladder leaning against the trunk of the tree. It wasn't as if she was purposefully avoiding work. She didn't mind working long hours in the fields or orchards. But the monotony of the chores did little to keep her attention from wandering to the numerous curiosities around her. Today she had found a kak'ora bird's tiny nest tucked in the crook of an orchard tree. The nest, long abandoned for the season, fascinated her with its intricate weaving of twigs, dried mud, and leaves. Then there had been the lacy spiderweb she had found, heavy with dew, like a jeweled drape. And the molted husk of a fiddler beetle glued to a leaf. So much to study and admire. She stretched the ache buried between her shoulders, staring at row after row of apple trees. For just a heartbeat, Elena felt a twinge of suffocation--the "willies" her mother called it. In the past, many workers had whispered of the orchard's smothering touch. The trees consumed the entire high country, blanketing hundreds of thousands of acres, spreading from the distant peaks of the towering Teeth down to the lowlands of the plains. While the orchard wore many different seasonal faces--a spread of pink and wh...
