About the Book
A WORLD WAR – IN A WORLD WHERE MAGIC WORKS
When the Duke of Bari suddenly dies, the neighboring nation of Algarve,
long seething over its defeat a generation ago in the Six Years' War,
sees its chance to bring Bari into the fold... an action which the other
countries surrounding Algarve cannot, by treaty, tolerate. As nation
after nation declares war, a chain of treaties are invoked, ultimately
bringing almost all the Powers of Derlavai into a war of unprecedented
destructiveness.
For modern magic is deadlier than in eras past. Trained flocks of
dragons rain explosive fire down on defenseless cities. Massed infantry
race from place to place along a network of ley-lines. Rival powers
harness sea leviathans to help sabotage one another's ships. The lights
are going out all across Derlavai, and will not come back on in this
lifetime.
Against this tapestry Harry Turtledove tells the story of an enormous
cast of characters: soldiers and generals, washerwomen and scholars,
peasants and diplomats. For all the world, highborn and low, is being
plunged by world war... into the darkness.
