Steles of the Sky

My main present this Christmas was a Kindle - I've finally entered the 21st Century ;) And as part of the present I got three new ebooks to start me off, I chose Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky trilogy which I've had on my to-buy list for a while. The three books are Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars and Steles of the Sky and they are fantasy, set in a world that is not our own with a strong Asian flavour.

The series opens in the aftermath of a battle. Temur, who is one of the protagonists of the story, is one of the defeated side and lucky to be alive - surviving mostly because he looked dead already. The battle was part of a civil war: Temur's people are very Mongol-like and this is a succession war that breaks out after the Khagan has died between his successors (much like after Genghis Khan's death in the real world). Temur is now one of the few claimants left alive. At first he's not concerned with that, he joins with some of the refugees and seems almost content to settle into anonymity. But it becomes clear that there is more going on than first meets the eye. Edene, the girl Temur is falling in love with, is stolen away from the refugee camp by blood ghosts called up from the dead of the battle by a sorcerer allied with the other side of the civil war. He sets off to rescue her and along the way discovers the sorcerer's schemes will have a wider impact than just on his own family and his own country, and resolves to stop him.

Click the link to read the rest of my review of the whole trilogy!