Book of the Week - Col Buchanan, Farlander

Although fantasy is not my favourite genre, every now and again I will try a book which gets good reviews. Farlander is a first novel from Col Buchanan, who was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1973. Fantasy/Sci Fi collectors are a passionate bunch, and if a book does well it can become very collectible. Farlander is published by Tor Books, but there is also a limited edition of 150 signed and numbered copies which looks good value and is still available at cover price from Goldsboro books. Farlander received a very positive mention in the Times at the weekend, and the limited edition looks like a good buy.

The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats, priests trained as subtle predators. The Mercian Free Ports are the only confederacy yet to fall. Their only land link to the southern continent, a long and narrow isthmus, is protected by the city of Bar-Khos. For ten years now, the great southern walls of Bar-Khos have been besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army. Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the Rōshun - who offer protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink. When the Holy Matriarch’s son deliberately murders a woman under the protection of the Rōshun; he forces the sect to seek his life in retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfil the Rōshun orders – their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict between the Empire and the Free Ports . . . into bloodshed and death.