In an alternate world where magic works, the Holy Roman Empire still rules Europe, the time of the Renaissance has come, with very different results. Norway is still pagan, and a sacred relic, the Armring of Telemark, has been stolen from Odin's temple. Without it, truce-oaths cannot be renewed and bloody war with the Empire will follow. Signy, the older stepsister to the King Vortenbras is accused. When she disappears, most think it proof of her gult. Her only partisan, the Corsair-Captain Cair, knows that she had been carried off and is determined to find and rescue her. Cair is an educated man, and a hardened skeptic, thinking that all talk of magic is nonsense. As he and Prince Manfred of Brittany set out to rescue Signy, following her trail into the Underworld, battling trolls and other deadly supernatural creatures every step of the way, he will not only find that magic is very real, and dangerously so, but that he himself has a natural talent for it. A new novel set in the universe of the top-selling novels The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic.
Dave Freer is a former Marine Biologist who specialized in fish (an Ichthyologist), proving that you can end up as an academic even if you did win a sports bursary (for rock-climbing) to take you through college. At seventeen was a conscripted Medic during the Angolan/South African conflict. Politically from a liberal anti-apartheid family this was quite an experience. He lived through it and came out as a 45 year old in a nineteen year old body, which may explain his frequent confusion. He is still deciding just what do when he grows up. His first postgraduate job was as Chief Scientific Officer for the Western Cape Commercial Shark fishery. As a biologist he's spent a lot of time working in water no sane person would go near, having encounters (both in small boats and in the water) with sharks, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, electric rays and a number of other toxic/lethal creatures. He has worked as a salvage diver, run two major fish farms (he's a very good plumber), as well as doing some steeplejack work. Additionally he has worked as the relief chef for a group of exclusive luxury game/ ecotourism/ whitewater-rafting lodges. He has an obsession with food, recreating traditional fare, something he uses in his books. He's a top mountaineer and rock-climber, opening many of his country's best rock routes. He's a fanatical spiny-lobster diver and flyfisherman and the author of a number of articles on both. If it is dangerous and a little crazy -- he's done it. Besides writing some amazingly boring but fundamental papers on shark age and growth and reproductive biology, he has authored or co-authored eight sf/fantasy novels, with number nine and ten in press, and further four contracted. He's also written a lot of shorter fiction, appearing in various collections.
He lives on a wonderful remote Island off the coast of Tasmania, Australia, a ten hour ferry trip to anywhere, with 3 dogs to do his thinking, 3 cats to be waited on, two sons to lead him astray, and a wonderful wife to be patient with him and them, although it is a task that would tax a saint. Sometimes he wonders why he does this. Other times he just wonders. See his webpage if you really want more.
