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The youthful artist-swordsman Benvenuti Sfondrati-Piccolomini arrived in the city of Goimr just in time for disaster to strike. The evil sorcerer Zulkeh had driven the King of the realm insane, then fled from the city! Things were not as they seemed. The wizard Zulkeh and his apprentice Shelyid were, in fact, guiltless. Zulkeh had been summoned to interpret the King of Goimr's mysterious dream, which the sorcerer came to realize foretold an impending catastrophe for civilization. Zulkeh and show more Shelyid had actually left Goimr to discover the really important implications of the dream. Much to the artist's dismay, his adventures and those of the sorcerer were hopelessly intertwined. Soon, Benvenuti and his two companions were off in pursuit of Zulkeh, trying to save the entire sub-continent of Grotum from conquest by the Ozarean Empire. Benvenuti was swept up in a whirlwind of revolutionary plotting and perilous wizardry as he traveled across the vast sub-continent. The only certainty was that he was on a quest the end of which he could not possibly fathom, accompanying a female revolutionary whose beauty was only outdone by her ferocity. Contains mature themes. show lessTags
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If you like the prologue, don't get put off if the first chapter drags a bit.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting - a hazard of gathering ebooks sometimes - but Flint soon drew me into this humorous fantasy story. I was much disgruntled and disappointed by a viewpoint switch, which took me from an entrancingly novel protagonist to a deeply verbose and rather tiresome character. While this is deliberate and for comic effect, I felt like it was overdone and the story was becoming dull. I was worried this would turn out to be our actual protagonist for the main story.
Luckily, from the next switch vim and vigour returned, and never left again. Flint's writing here resembled my old favourite Craig Shaw Gardner, but while CSG produces pure show more slapstick farce, Flint offers something less overtly ludicrous. I was grinning through most of my read, and laughed out loud not a few times. Praise indeed. I hope he'll get round to producing a sequel. show less
I wasn't sure what I was expecting - a hazard of gathering ebooks sometimes - but Flint soon drew me into this humorous fantasy story. I was much disgruntled and disappointed by a viewpoint switch, which took me from an entrancingly novel protagonist to a deeply verbose and rather tiresome character. While this is deliberate and for comic effect, I felt like it was overdone and the story was becoming dull. I was worried this would turn out to be our actual protagonist for the main story.
Luckily, from the next switch vim and vigour returned, and never left again. Flint's writing here resembled my old favourite Craig Shaw Gardner, but while CSG produces pure show more slapstick farce, Flint offers something less overtly ludicrous. I was grinning through most of my read, and laughed out loud not a few times. Praise indeed. I hope he'll get round to producing a sequel. show less
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207+ Works 28,953 Members
Eric Flint was born in southern California in 1947. He received a bachelor's degree from UCLA in 1968 and did some work toward a Ph.D. in history, with a specialization in history of southern Africa in the 18th and early 19th centuries, also at UCLA. After leaving the doctoral program over political issues, he supported himself from that time show more until age 50 as a laborer, machinist and labor organizer. In 1993, his short story entitled Entropy and the Strangler won first place in the Winter 1992 Writers of the Future contest. His first novel, Mother of Demons, was published in 1997 and was picked by the Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. He became a full-time writer in 1999. He writes science fiction and fantasy works including The Philosophical Strangler and the Belisarius series. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Forward the Mage
- Original publication date
- 2002
- People/Characters
- Ignace; Greyboar
- Epigraph
- Wisely hath it been written that those great upheavals which so enflame the passions of society that they excite the masses to rebellion and enmity against all lawful custom and sovereignty, wherefore the common herd is led t... (show all)o commit many profane mischiefs against the peace, including both mad foreign adventures and rude civil revolts, may not be comprehended as mere brutish conflicts between vast opposed powers, each bent on conquering for itself the Helm of State. Rather, we say that they are compounded of many societal atoms, indeed, of a multitude of small dramas, mere chance encounters, perhaps, 'twixt private persons of divers degrees and sorts.
Vulgar history will, of course, take no heed of these events, for they will appear to those witless sycophants of Clio's muse to be so contemptible, prosaic and inglorious, compared to the deeds of kings, ministers, generals, revolutionists and agitators, to the discordant flux of the classes and the masses, that they will be blinded to their import and, forsooth, will roundly and churlishly despise them. Yet these small episodes, we say, are the true stuff of History. For, though men go their way quietly in tranquil times, yet, in such epochs when storm clouds gather o'er the State and insurrectionary thoughts steal into the minds of the pauper classes, then may the separate lives of men be severally fused as if by a lightning bolt of social hatred, wherein all of society is transformed, and, like the wounded Leviathan, vents its unleashed fury at mute and fear-filled Nature.
Of course, we find in the literature other theories, chiefly opposed to our own. These, however, we may dismiss, for they are all of them perniciously false and utterly repugnant to the human intellect in every respect.
The College of Historians
University of Ozarae (in Exile) - Dedication
- This book is dedicated to our wives and mothers, who always believed; and to those great pioneers who first aroused our enthusiasm for fantasy: Francois Rabelais, Miguel Cervantes, Voltaire, and Jonathan Swift; ... (show all);and, of course, to the world's Sancho Panzas.
- First words
- I arrived in the city of Goimr upon the most wretched ship imaginable.
- Quotations
- Pushing down the peak of his pique hat to cover his widow's peak and peeking through the window, Pike's pique peaked as La Madame's peke bit him on his peak of a nose.
"How piquant!" exclaimed the imperious dowager La ... (show all)Madame. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Sometime around noon of the next day, as I walked north, I remembered Wolfgang's last words to me. And it was strange, that it was those words which brought the first smile to my lips in days.
Two words. "The secret of the universe," according to a lunatic.
Things change.
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- English
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- ASINs
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