Description

Book 1 of the Serpent Catch Series

Long ago Earth’s paleobiologists established the planet Anee as a vast storehouse of extinct species, each continent home to life forms of a different era. For a thousand years the starfarers’ great sea serpents formed a wall of teeth and flesh that protected Smilodon Bay from the ravaging dinosaurs that swam across the ocean from Hotland. Now the serpents are gone and Anee is being ravaged by tyranny, war and slavery.

Tull, son to a human father and a Neanderthal mother, feels doomed to toil his life away as a common field hand, but his mission becomes clear when he takes action to save his homeland. Tull must seek a distant river in the slave nation of Craal, where young serpents can be found. Legend has it that Adjonai, the Neanderthal god of terror, is king of Craal. Yet only by facing this dark enemy can Tull hope to bring home his serpent catch alive.

This is the first installment of a four part series. Originally published under the name “Dave Wolverton.”

Purchase from your favorite online book retailer

“No one who has read [David Farland] doubts that his is a major talent.”

—Algis Budrys, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“For me, what lifts this book our of the first rank of quest-adventures and onto another plane entirely is Wolverton’s creation of the Pwi, a people who are as loving and spiritual as Homo sapiens is angry and rational. . . . An extraordinary novel of ideas that coexist quite easily with a powerful story of adventure and character. . . . You won’t soon forget this book.” 

—The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Chosen for an expedition into the hostile Kingdom of Crael, the half-breed Tull faces his greatest challenge as he seeks to reconcile his human and Neanderthal halves in a world where he has no real place. [Farland] sets this fantasy-like quest on a distant moon where genetic engineering has re-created extinct and mythological species, and where humans enslave their Neanderthal creations to increase their own power. This excellent blend of sf and fantasy belongs in most libraries.”

—The Library Journal

“A world at war, alliance of many sentient creatures coming together in a last-ditch effort to win their freedom from a slave-based empire, characters you know and care about finding love and meaning in the midst of death and chaos – it is. . . a profoundly philosophical work.”

—Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award Winner Orson Scott Card