Showing results by narrator "Simon Keating" in All Categories

Fantasy fans rejoice! Seven years after writer and editor Robert Silverberg made publishing history with Legends, the acclaimed anthology of original short novels by some of the greatest writers in fantasy fiction, the long-awaited second volume is here.

This epic tale sweeps across continents and time, hovers over a key era in American history, and deftly realizes the humanity of a whole cast of characters. Told through flashbacks and alternating points of view, The Last Crossing is about redemption, about seeking and finding, about human feelings and strengths, about personal honor, and about that moment in life when we must decide to cross over and surrender to love.

For a soldier who was always more interested in history than shooting people, a deployment to garrison an ancient structure in the Middle East seemed like a nice perk in an otherwise monotonous military career. The site, immeasurably old and once the focus of great battles, is now but a collection of lonely monoliths and crumbling walls.

Written in 1987 and recently discovered by his widow, H. R. F. Keating's A Kind of Light is an homage to Joseph Conrad, a writer he greatly admired. It is from that author's Heart of Darkness that the title is taken. Conrad's African jungle is the setting, and it has two interwoven stories. The first concerns a young Victorian gentlewoman who sets out into the heart of the Dark Continent, accompanied only by native bearers, in search of a plant which she has been told is the cure for the ravaging disease typhoid.