The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [0]
The Age of Unreason
Book One: Newton's Cannon
“The opening blast of his planned Age of Unreason trilogy is powerful enough to make readers grab Book Two, A Calculus of Angels, when it arrives.”
—USA Today
“A new myth-maker, a new star of the fantasy genre has arrived. Like Ursula K. LeGuin in the ‘60s, John Varley in the ‘70s, and Orson Scott Card in the ‘80s, author J. Gregory Keyes may well be the leading fantasy writer of the 1990s.”
—BookPage
Book Two: A Calculus of Angels
“Masterful … A bravura performance … [An] ingenious mélange of Age of Unreason period details, stunning psychic and alchemical phenomena, [and] fetching poetic descriptions … Lavish and thoughtful.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Book Three: Empire of Unreason
“The most original fantasy I have read in years.”
—KEVIN ANDERSON Bestselling coauthor of Dune: House Atreides
“Keyes still is a master of the details that make much of this universe believable, and the amount of action definitely makes the book exciting.”
—Booklist
By J. Gregory Keyes
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group:
The Chosen of the Changeling
THE WATERBORN
THE BLACKGOD
The Age of Unreason
NEWTON'S CANNON
A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
EMPIRE OF UNREASON
THE SHADOWS OF GOD
The Psi Corps Trilogy
BABYLON 5: DARK GENESIS
BABYLON 5: DEADLY RELATIONS
BABYLON 5: FINAL RECKONING
STAR WARS®: THE NEW JEDI ORDER:
EDGE OF VICTORY: CONQUEST
STAR WARS®: THE NEW JEDI ORDER:
EDGE OF VICTORY: REBIRTH
Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1-800-733-3000.
For
Steve Saffel,
Del Rey Books
Contents
What Has Gone Before
Prologue
PART ONE
THE DESIGNE OF THE APOCALYPSE
1. New Paris
2. Faith
3. Return of the Margrave
4. Big Mile
5. King Philippe's Reception
6. Geneaologies
7. Guns on the Altamaha
8. In the Navel of the World
9. Old Acquaintance
10. Hercule
11. Downstream
12. To Slay the Sun
13. Demonstrations Quaint and Curious
PART TWO
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
1. Abomination
2. An Interesting Outcome
3. The Sound
4. Defeat
5 Another Old Acquaintance
6. A New Matter
7. Ghosts and God
8. Brawls and Battles
9. An Unlikely Welcome
10. Things Broken
11. Three Kings
12. No Retreat
13. Hard Wind
14. The Roof of the World
15. The Duel
16. Castle, Tree, and Cord
17. Epiphanies
18. Cognac and Consequences
Epilogue: Declaration
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the editing team—Veronica Chapman, Martha Schwartz, Betty Harris, Melanie Gold, and Alix Krijgsman, who managed things. As usual, Terese Nielsen provided a wonderful painting, which Min Choi and art director Dave Stevenson transformed into a terrific cover. Thanks to Nell Keyes, Kris Boldis, and Ken Carleton for giving me their impressions of the manuscript.
What Has Gone Before
In 1681, in his laboratory at Trinity College, Isaac Newton discovered Philosopher's Mercury, the key to matter and energy, and from this discovery came a flood of inventions.
Heatless alchemical lights brightened the night streets of London and Paris. Aetherschreibers sent messages instantaneously around the globe. Kings and princes commissioned terrible new weapons with which to fight their wars.
And in Boston, a young man named Benjamin Franklin sought his destiny. Not happy as his brother's printing apprentice, Ben longed to study the scientific. He read and dreamed in his spare time, and through his studies, he found a way to modify an aetherschreiber to receive not only the messages intended for it, but also to eavesdrop on any that might be floating in the aether. He fell into correspondence with an unknown mathematician, one striving to complete a complex calculus equation. Blinded by his love for science, when Franklin saw the solution to the problem, he shared it immediately.
A continent away, Adrienne de