American empire--the center cannot hold

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Peter Bacho

Set in Seattle from the 1950s to the present, Dark Blue Suit depicts the lives of two groups: Filipino immigrant pioneers, the Manong generation who arrived on the Pacific Coast during the 1920s and 1930s, and their American-born children. Although narrated as fiction, the stories - their landmarks, activities, settings, and events - are grounded in historical fact. The book opens with the annual spring dispatch, by the Seattle-based Filipino union, of thousands of Filipino workers to the Alaska salmon canneries. We meet characters who reappear throughout the stories: Vince, the tough but charming union foreman, his American-born son Buddy, and many others who age and change in ironic counterpoint to persistent themes of loyalty, fierce ethnic pride, and a willingness to struggle against hostile forces in society. We encounter the inevitable aging and passing of the Manong generation, but we sense as well the arrival of its vision. Babies are born. The migrant fisheries worker gets a nine-to-five job, and his children go to college. The conclusion builds to a quiet power that is essentially elegiac; an era closes, but the voices of the older generation are shouldered by the younger, to keep the history, to retell the stories, and to pay homage.

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Robert Newcomb

Not since Terry Goodkind unsheathed the Sword of Truth has there been such an epic tale of heroism and magic that so captures the imagination as this monumental new work by a master storyteller. In The Fifth Sorceress, Robert Newcomb conjures a time and place wrought with exquisite detail, characters vividly drawn and deeply felt, and a history rich in glory and horror, splendor and secrets. . . ."We gave them a chance once, long ago. . . . We offered to share power equally, and in peace. But they refused and chose war. With them it was all or nothing. Wizard against Sorceress. Male against female. Light against dark."It is more than three centuries since the ravages of a devastating war nearly tore apart the kingdom of Eutracia. In its wake, those who masterminded the bloodshed--a quartet of powerful, conquest-hungry Sorceresses--were sentenced to exile, with return all but impossible and death all but inevitable. Now a land of peace and plenty, protected and guided by a council of immortal wizards, Eutracia is about to crown a new king. And as the coronation approaches, the spirit of celebration fills every heart. Except one.Prince Tristan is a reluctant monarch-to-be. Though born with the "endowed" blood that will give him the power to master magic, and destined by tradition to succeed his father as ruler, he is a rebel soul. And when he discovers the ancient, hidden caves where strange red waters flow--possessed of their own mysterious magic--it only makes him yearn all the more to escape his future of duty . . . and succumb to the stirrings of enchantment within him.But more than tradition compels Tristan to ascend the throne. The very existence of Eutracia depends upon it. For after these long centuries of peace, dreadful omens have begun to appear, heralding something too unspeakable to ponder. And if indeed the old evil has returned, hungry to wreak vengeance, Tristan's role in an ages-old prophecy must be fulfilled--or the cost to his kingdom and his people will be beyond imagination. It will be a battle like none ever known, against an enemy whose thirst for blood and domination is depthless and unyielding. And for Tristan, it will be the ultimate challenge: facing an adversary whose greatest weapon is the person he loves most--transformed into the instrument of his annihilation . . . and the catalyst that will doom Eutracia forever to darkness.From the Hardcover edition.

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Chaunce Stanton

An epic battle between psychological manipulation and natural magic unfolds as Perjos, the world's greatest magician, returns to the Blank Slate Boarding House for Creatives to settle old scores. The house's newest servant, Emily Turner, must resist the magician's powers alone after her only friend disappears, leaving her to face Perjos as he destroys the lives of the artists who stay at the Blank Slate. The one person left to help Emily stop Perjos is Old Ted who lives in the forest, but his world - and our world - is forever changed by a tree plague that devastates the forests. The Blank Slate welcomes believers and skeptics alike in this dark and richly layered tale of historical-magical realism, inviting the question "What is Magic and What is Reality?"--Amazon website.

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R.A. MacAvoy

*Lens of the World* is a fantasy novel recounting, in his own words, the coming of age of Nazhuret, an outcast and orphan who rises from his lowly estate as a ward of the Sordaling military school to become a mighty warrior, philosopher, and confidant of the king of Bestinglon himself. The first of a series.