Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group Limited" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

The end is coming. Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him but it’s going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm and there’s only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend and his oldest enemy. It’s time for the Bloody-Nine to come home. With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no-one is safe and no-one can be trusted.

They say Black Dow's killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbour, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they've brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.

Inquisitor Glokta, a crippled and bitter relic of the last war, former fencing champion turned torturer, is trapped in a twisted and broken body - not that he allows it to distract him from his daily routine of torturing smugglers.Nobleman, dashing officer and would-be fencing champion Captain Jezal dan Luthar is living a life of ease by cheating his friends at cards. Vain and shallow, the biggest blot on his horizon is having to get out of bed in the morning to train with obsessive and boring old men.

Tricked into releasing the evil spirit Ruin while attempting to close the Well of Ascension, new emperor Elend Venture and his wife, the assassin Vin, are now hard-pressed to save the world.This adventure brings the Mistborn epic fantasy trilogy to a dramatic and surprising climax as Sanderson's saga offers complex characters and a compelling plot, asking hard questions about loyalty, faith and responsibility.

Springtime in Styria. And that means war. There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

Bitter and merciless war is coming to the frozen north. It's bloody and dangerous and the Union army, split by politics and hamstrung by incompetence, is unprepared for the slaughter that's coming. Lacking experience, training, and in some cases even weapons, the army is scarcely equipped to repel Bethod's scouts, let alone his elite forces. In the heat-ravaged south, the Gurkish are massing to assault the city of Dagoska, defended by Inquisitor Glokta.

The year is 2033. The world has been reduced to rubble. Humanity is nearly extinct and the half-destroyed cities have become uninhabitable through radiation. Beyond their boundaries, they say, lie endless burned-out deserts and the remains of splintered forests. Survivors still remember the past greatness of humankind, but the last remains of civilisation have already become a distant memory. Man has handed over stewardship of the earth to new life-forms.

Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap, is a legend to all who don't know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteren of the wars against the lizards, he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire's slave trade. There, he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives.

Isak is a white-eye, feared and despised in equal measure. Trapped in a life of poverty, hated and abused by his father, Isak dreams of escape, but when his chance comes, it isn't to a place in the army as he'd expected. Instead, the Gods have marked him out as heir-elect to the brooding Lord Bahl, the Lord of the Fahlan. Lord Bahl is also a white-eye, a genetic rarity that produces men stronger, more savage and more charismatic than their normal counterparts. Their magnetic charm and brute strength both inspires and oppresses others.

The world has become a battleground in a war which no side is winning. But for those determined to retain power, the prolonged stalemate cannot be tolerated, so desperate measures must be taken. Max Halloran has no idea. He's living the brief and glorious life of a hunter-killer pilot. He's an ace in the air, on his way up through the ranks, in love; and with his family's every need provided for in thanks for his service, Max has everything....right up until he hears something he shouldn't have and refuses to let it go.

The world is different now. There are no rules, no governments, and no guarantees that you'll be saved. Rival factions have taken over, fighting each other for survival with no loyalty to anyone but their own. At 21, Hayden has taken over Blackwing and is one of the youngest leaders in the area. In protecting his camp from starvation, raids from other factions and the threat of being kidnapped, he has enough to worry about before he finds Grace. The daughter of the head of the rival camp Greystone, she is slow to trust anyone, much less the leader of those she has been trained to kill.

There's a new card in the Mercenary Deck - one Lynx isn't sure if he's happy to see or not. The assassin Toil now wears the Princess of Blood on her jacket, and even Lynx would admit she's a woman cloaked in chaos and bloodshed. Their new mission is to escort a dignitary to the pious and ancient city of Jarrazir - beneath which lies a fabled labyrinth. Having barely survived their last underground adventure the mercenaries aren't keen for another, but Toil has other plans. Under threat of siege and horrors rising from the labyrinth, even the Mercenary Deck may have to accept that Jarrazir's prohibition laws aren't their biggest problem.

Michael Poole finds himself in a very strange landscape.... This is the centre of the Galaxy. And in a history without war with the humans, the Xeelee have had time to built an immense structure here. The Xeelee Belt has a radius 10,000 times Earth's orbital distance. It is a light-year in circumference. If it was set in the solar system, it would be out in the Oort Cloud, among the comets - but circling the sun. If it was at rest, it would have a surface area equivalent to about 30 billion Earths. But it is not at rest: it rotates at near light speed.

Half a million years in the future, on a dead, war-ravaged world at the centre of the galaxy, there is a mile-high statue of Michael Poole. Poole, born on Earth in the fourth millennium, was one of mankind's most influential heroes. He was not a warrior, not an emperor. He was an engineer, a builder of wormhole transit systems. But Poole's work would ultimately lead to a vast and destructive conflict, a million-year war between humanity and the enigmatic, powerful aliens known as the Xeelee. The Xeelee won.

Don't look back. That's where the danger lies. With Grace left reeling from choosing between Hayden and her family, she knows she needs to accept her decision. Meanwhile, as the youngest leader of Blackwing, Hayden is coping with the demands placed on him to keep the camp alive. Can he protect his friends from their violent rivals? And should he trust himself to do the right thing? Demand loyalty. Protect your family. Trust no one.

Calling Major Tom is a funny, uplifting tale of friendship and community about a man who has given up on the world...but discovers in the most unlikely way that it might not have given up on him. We all know someone like Thomas. The grumpy next-door neighbour who complains to the residents' committee about the state of your front lawn. The man who tuts when you don't have the correct change at the checkout. The colleague who sends an all-company email when you accidentally use the last drop of milk.

You fight, you kill, you steal, you lie...or you die. As war breaks out between Blackwing and Greystone, Grace's allegiance becomes clear. But that doesn't make her task any easier. Hayden knows that war is coming. That these raids are just the beginning, and there is something else coming for them. But can he save his camp and free himself at the same time? Welcome to the revolution.

This is the end of us all. For Hayden and Grace, the threat of war has become a reality. The world is running out of resources, driving the survivors to drastic, inhuman measures. Blackwing is the obvious target, and physical attacks from enemies are accompanied by the devastating mental turmoil that cannot be fought off with weapons. This is life impacted by war with enemies, allies and oneself. Now, not much is certain, but a few things are guaranteed: there will be pain. There will be death. There will be annihilation.

From the critically acclaimed screenwriter of Doctor Strange and author of Sea of Rust and Queen of the Dark Things comes a hair-raising collection of short fiction that illuminates the strange, humorous, fantastical and downright diabolical that tantalise and terrorise us: demons, monsters, zombie dinosaurs and Death itself.

When Charm became Queen of Karisma, the Silversmith made her a precious gift. A bracelet. On it are fastened 13 silver amulets, called 'charms' in honour of the new queen. The bracelet is magic with the power to control the forces of nature and keep everything in balance. As long as Queen Charm, and she alone, has possession of the bracelet all will be well. And so it was until Zorgan, the evil magician, stole the bracelet and scattered the charms far and wide. Then there was chaos!