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Overview
Jim Grimsley's novels and short stories have been favorably compared to the works of Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Now he unleashes an ambitious and audacious collision between science and magic.
The Twil Gate links two very different realms. On one side of the portal is Senal, an advanced technological civilization of some thirty billion inhabitants, all cybernetically linked and at war with machine intelligences many light-years away. On the other side is Irion, a land of myth and legend, where the world is flat and mighty wizards once ruled.
Jedda Martele is a linguist and trader from Senal. Although fascinated by the languages and cultures of Irion, she shares her people's assumption that Irion is backward and superstitious and no match for her homeland's superior numbers and technology. But as the two realms march inevitably toward war, Jedda finds herself at the center of historic, unimaginable events that will challenge everything she has ever believed about the world—and herself.
The Ordinary is a powerful and entrancing tale of magic, science, and the mysterious truth that binds them together.
Synopsis
Jim Grimsley's novels and short stories have been favorably compared to the works of Samuel R. Delany, Jack Vance, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Now he unleashes an ambitious and audacious collision between science and magic.
The Twil Gate links two very different realms. On one side of the portal is Senal, an advanced technological civilization of some thirty billion inhabitants, all cybernetically linked and at war with machine intelligences many light-years away. On the other side is Irion, a land of myth and legend, where the world is flat and mighty wizards once ruled.
Jedda Martele is a linguist and trader from Senal. Although fascinated by the languages and cultures of Irion, she shares her people's assumption that Irion is backward and superstitious and no match for her homeland's superior numbers and technology. But as the two realms march inevitably toward war, Jedda finds herself at the center of historic, unimaginable events that will challenge everything she has ever believed about the world—-and herself.
The Ordinary is a powerful and entrancing tale of magic, science, and the mysterious truth that binds them together.
Publishers Weekly
Set in the same future world as Kirith Kirin (2000), which won a Lambda Award, Grimsley's latest SF novel intimately explores the conflicts between magic and science, subconscious and conscious action, the past and the future. The planet of the tech-using Hormling of Senal is connected to the land of Irion, home of the magic-believing Erejhen, via the mysterious Twil Gate, a portal of unknown origins in the ocean. Although traders on both sides enjoy brisk commerce through the gate, Hormling leaders look more and more to Irion as a means to provide land and resources for their expanding civilization. Translator Jedda Martele, member of a Senal diplomatic mission to Irion, is caught in the middle when the delegation's true purpose is revealed: they are meant to be in place to parlay for a Hormling invasion force after it races through the gate to occupy strategic Irion ports, but they haven't reckoned with the ability of the so-called "backwards" Erejhen to handle invaders. Grimsley's finely textured societies have a clockwork intricacy that fascinates even as it dispels surprise. Unlike many "literary" authors who fail when they try to write SF, PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award winner Grimsley (Winter Birds) has the necessary world-building skills to shine brightly here. Agent, Peter Hagen. (May 12) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.