Showing results by author "M.C.A. Hogarth"

Restored to a working body, Morgan Locke has returned to Troth to seek the legendary athenaeum at Vigil in the hopes it will produce a solution to the enchantment binding the elves. But elves are not the only creatures now stepping out of folklore: the demons are coming, and they bring with them the armies of the dead. If they do not want to see their world consumed, Morgan and his companions will have to find the answers, whether they come from books...or bloodshed. Time is running out....

Evicted from vigil and faced with the impending descent of demons, Morgan Locke and his companions must unravel all the mysteries that are barring them from the salvation of their country and their world. Can they unbind the curse and free the magic to the hands of their allies before the dead rise again? And in the aftermath of that epic battle, what will become of the world they've always known? The adventure doesn't end when the last sword is swung. There is a great deal to be done.

Reese Eddings has enough to do just keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to pay food for herself and her micro-crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to say "NO!" And then to remember that she sort of promised to repay the loan. But she doesn't remember signing up to tangle with pirates and slavers over a space elf prince…

Ten years after she graduated from the Fleet Academe at Terracentrus, Alysha Forrest was captain of the battlecruiser UAV Stardancer with more honor to her name than any other officer her age. But before that dawn there was a night, and it is in the darkness that souls are made...or broken.

When the results of Earth's genetic experiments fled from their makers, they took their own name as they left humanity behind; centuries later, the Pelted have spread into a multi-world alliance of cultures and languages, cribbed from Terra or created whole-cloth. Claws and Starships collects six stories of the Pelted, ranging from the humor of a xenoanthropologist on the wrong side of mythology to more serious works considering the implications of genetic engineering in a far-future classroom.

The Alliance has sent twelve ambassadors to the Chatcaavan Empire, all twelve returned early, defeated. None of their number have been successful at taking that brutal empire to task for their violations of the treaty. None have survived the vicious court of a race of winged shapechangers, one maintained by cruelty, savagery and torture. Lisinthir Nase Galare is the Alliance's thirteenth emissary. A duelist, an esper and a prince of his people, he has been sent to bring an empire to heel.

Morgan Locke, university student, has been hiding his debilitating illness with fair enough success when two unlikely emissaries arrive bearing the news that he is prince to a nation of creatures out of folklore. Ridiculous! And yet, if magic exists, could it heal him? The ensuing journey will resurrect the forgotten griefs of history, and before it's over, all the world will be remade by thorns and steel.

For the Ai-Naidar, a species of slim, gracile aliens, caste and tradition are not the shackles that imprison the spirit but the silences that make sense of the music of their lives. The Aphorisms of Kherishdar collects 25 short tales about what it is to have an Ai-Naidari soul: to find comfort in tradition, law and structure; to revere interdependence over individualism; to know one's place... to always have one.

In Kherishdar, when a person commits a crime, they become their sin.... Suicide. Rape. Child Abuse. Addiction. Twenty-five crimes. Twenty-five stories. Twenty-five narrators ... and one minister over them all, to judge, convict, and correct the faulty: the priest who serves Shame. This companion to The Aphorisms of Kherishdar explores the wayward and their journey back to society, offering another glimpse into the Ai-Naidari culture - a darker, more difficult glimpse. Without Shame, there is no Civilization.

The pirate lioness Mazalaen has survived by pretending to be a man, a murderer and a thief... and fears she has become those things in truth. Until she meets a fearless princess in battle. Could this woman be her salvation? Originally published in Anthrolations.

Reese is only just getting used to running the Earthrise in the black-and with an Eldritch in her crew-when a trip to a colony world gives rise to a whole new problem: Hirianthial is showing powers that even the Eldritch rarely have, and that only in legend. He badly needs training, support and advice, and the only place he can find them is... at home. To see the world of the Eldritch is a once in a lifetime opportunity, a thing of fantasies and rumor. And to finally meet the Eldritch Queen, the author of so many of Reese's windfalls!

In this sequel to Reader's Choice Award Unspeakable Tanel, Nashada and Ekkuli return in a new city, having made themselves a comfortable home... a comfortable home, until an invader arrives and threatens once again to rearrange all Tanel's notions of love.

The last thing Jekun wanted to do was turn neuter. She'd spent her life as a pampered breeder in the caverns of House Sadlan, a female prized for her intelligence and stamina. Changing this late in her life meant... loss. Heartbreak. Work! Can she - it - find a place among the neuters of her House? Or, is there no peace to be found in a new body? A short story of the Jokka.

When Tanel's lover takes him to see the teller of naughty stories, he does not expect it to be a neuter, nor for it to challenge him to examine his own preconceptions, his fears...his ability to love. This story won a Strange Horizons Reader's Choice Award and was included in the Best of Strange Horizons, Volume 2. It was also a finalist for the 2003 Spectrum Awards in the short fiction category. It is included in the print book collection Clays Beneath the Skies.

The Queen of the Eldritch has offered Reese Eddings a life out of a fairy tale, one beyond the imagination of a poor girl from Mars. Unfortunately, the day Reese reached out to accept Liolesa's offer, Hirianthial's enemies betrayed him - and his entire planet - to a race of sociopathic shapeshifters with dreams of conquest. To beat them, Reese will have to own the power she's always denied herself, and Hirianthial must make peace with his bloody past.

In my first year on Kickstarter, I ran four campaigns. All four succeeded; in fact, all four overfunded, some by over 400%. I am not a media superstar. I am, at best, a very energetic indie author and freelance painter. But even a small fish can make a big splash in the Kickstarter pond.

With the Eldritch civil war over, a castle to renovate, and a wedding to prepare for, the last thing Reese is thinking about is taking a break. But the New Year is coming and the Eldritch take their holidays very seriously, so Reese decides it can't hurt to observe the local proprieties. Who knows? Maybe it'll make good practice for what Felith is calling the wedding of the century. Of course, that was before Reese realized it was going to involve gifts. And decorating. And a town full of recalcitrant Eldritch tenants.

Captain Isidore Wyatt, new transfer to the Alliance Fleet from the Terran Space Navy, is still getting used to having engineered aliens for officers when he's called to investigate a possible pirate vessel. Except not everything is what it seems, and these pirates have ambitions above and beyond the norm....

Ensign Taylitha Basil wasn't sure what to expect when her ship dropped her off at the officer training retreat at Quickwater Preserve. A hike up the mountain? She's not much of a hiker. A trip down it in a canoe? Even worse, she's not a great swimmer. An obnoxious peer who put himself in charge? An and Bast preserve her. But all of that seems manageable when she meets Alysha Forrest, one of the Diamondwing's ensigns. In years to come they would serve together on the Stardancer as an unbeatable command team.

Alysha Forrest is looking forward to her assignment as the Songlance's newest lieutenant, particularly when it gets her placed as the liaison to the ship's water environment crewmembers. Interfacing with the mermaid-like Naysha and the alien Platies who serve as the ship's navigators is an exhilarating experience, and all the other officers on the crew are eager to welcome her into the fold...all of them, except one. The disaster at the leadership retreat is nothing to the one they have to handle now. If they can...