Wonders Will Never Cease
A Novel
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
An Exhilarating, Magical Blend of History and Fantasy Set during the Original Game of Thrones.
Beginning with the Palm Sunday battle of Towton, the bloodiest ever fought on English soil, Wonders Will Never Cease relates the fabulous adventures of one man and his noble family amid the chaos and political intrigue that beset England during the War of the Roses, when two great houses battled for control of the throne. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales and brother to the future queen, Elizabeth Woodville, seems to die during that battle and be resurrected. While dead, he witnesses the Grail ceremony last seen during the age of King Arthur, before England was cursed by war and Hell so filled with bodies that the dead now walk the land.
What he wakes to and witnesses for the rest of his life as he defends his king is a ceaseless stream of wonders: a family rumored to be descended from the fairy Melusine and imbued with her dragon’s blood, a talking head that predicts the future, a miraculous cauldron, a museum of skulls, alchemists and wizards, the Swordsman’s Pentacle, and plenty of battles, sieges, swordplay, jousts, treachery, murder, beheadings, and horrific torture. And all the while, stories—some so porous that their characters enter history and threaten their maker.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irwin (The Arabian Nightmare) draws on the strangest elements of early Renaissance legend and history for this charming, peculiar picaresque. Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, fights on the losing side of the War of the Roses and dies in battle. After a brief trip in the land of the dead, he finds himself back among the living; even more unexpectedly, he's in the new king's good graces. During the reign of Edward IV, he encounters events both miraculous and strange, but Anthony provides little besides the stitching that holds a number of disparate tales together; the actual events of his life such as the deaths of his father take up less space than a tale about one of King Arthur's knights. Narratives are spun by Anthony's mother, Jacquetta (supposedly descended from a dragon); a court alchemist named Ripley; and Thomas Malory, a knight who mostly spends his time working on his magnum opus, Le Morte d'Arthur. These stories drift out of their tellers' control, as Anthony's life drifts out of his, and he ends up on the wrong side of history again. Medievalists and history buffs will enjoy this premodern romp of bloody battles, court intrigues, and the occasional prophesying disembodied head, but fans of Game of Thrones and The Other Boleyn Girl are likely to bounce off it.
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