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Synopsis / Contents:
Earth in its penultimate age: ancient, inbred, bucolic, full of antique secrets and even more archaic intrigues. Under a melancholy orange sun, decaying aristocratic families still wield their feudal powers after thousands of generations; but the Archon is their subtle absolute ruler, and he has placed certain cruel excesses, and certain abandoned country estates, permanently out of bounds . . .
Luff Imbry, corpulent master thief, must penetrate one of those forbidden properties. For millennia ago, a sadistic nobleman built there an underground maze, its walls hung with priceless works of art, its corridors stalked by intelligent torture machines, a secret domain where the corrupt blue-blood would imprison and torment anyone who offended him. Determined to liberate the most precious of the labyrinth's treasures, Imbry recruits an unwilling "ghost" -- the preserved essence of the mad duke's long-dead granddaughter -- as his guide. But in the twisted darkness, the fat man finds that the dead cannot always be trusted.
In his latest witty tale of the Archonate, Matthew Hughes sets his most engaging character on a collision course with forces dark and devious. Can even the legendary craftiness of Luff Imbry triumph without aid from higher powers?
BIO:Canadian by nationality, Matthew Hughes writes science-fantasy with more than a hint of crime fiction. He is well known for his critically acclaimed series of Archonate novels set on Earth in the very far future:
Fools Errant, Fool Me Twice, Black Brillion, The Commons, Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, Hespira, and--his favourite among his books - Template, published by PS in 2008 and by Paizo in the USA in 2010. A major new work in the sequence, featuring the ingenious thief Luff Imbry, is
The Other, due from Underland Press in late 2010.
Matt's short fiction, much of it also located in the Archonate, has appeared in
Alfred Hitchcock's, Asimov's, Blue Murder, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Postscripts, Storyteller, Interzone and a number of
Year's Best anthologies. He has won the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, and has been short-listed for the Aurora, Nebula and Derringer Awards.
At present, Matt is augmenting a fiction writer's uncertain income by housesitting. His web page is at http://www.archonate.com.