Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity. A heated romance and chase in a splashy, scary setting. By the close, there have deaths of varying nastiness (how about being ground between walls and a pryf?)-and a lovers' escape. The chase is lengthy and studded with such elements as: the strategy and antics of the allied ``Quicken-tree'' people, of ancient (perhaps faerie?) origins struggles through caves of ice and utter darkness fantastic beauty and horror the pryf (giant sea worms) and a magic door leading to the sea. A ruse, planned by Dain, derails his pursuit, and the pair escape, on the way becoming lovers in some luxuriously steamy scenes. Mutual uninterest, even dislike, evolves into a fascination with the delicious complexities of each other. The sorcerer Dain, who works his ``magic'' in a tower of the castle, has no interest in Ceridwen but hates Caradoc, and so rescues the girl and begins to heal her. There, she's derisively tortured and displayed. When she's mature, Ceridwen is affianced to Caradoc but flees into the forest, where she's captured and taken to the Castle Wydehaw. The children are whisked away by a Druid's daughter and sent to be raised in the homes of devout Christians. In the Prologue, two small children, the boy Mychael and his twin sister Ceridwen, are lost in the caves beneath the castle of Carn Merioneth as their mother, descendent of a priestess, is about to perform a rite to ``open the door between worlds.'' But then death and horror arrive in the terrifying person of the vicious Caradoc, ``the Boar,'' who kills all and becomes the new lord of Carn Merioneth. From the Paperback edition.A first hardcover in which a love affair of erotic discovery and passion is staged against a background of horror and ancient rites in 12th-century Wales-and brought to a gripping conclusion in a chase through fantastic underground caverns.
Now Ceridwen and Dain must struggle to escape the snares set by friend and foe alike, even as they discover a love that promises to bind them forever. Yet there are many who seek the maiden, all meaning to wrest her power for themselves. But he finally beholds true enchantment in the spell of passion innocently woven by the ethereal Ceridwen. She is Ceridwen, an orphan unaware of her immense power-until fate leads her from a secluded abbey into the tower of a feared sorcerer.Dain Lavrans has no magic in himself, only the secrets of medicine he uncovered while a soldier in the Crusades. In one of the most original and stunning debuts of the season, Glenna McReynolds brings historical romance readers the experience they've been waiting for: a novel of dark magic, stirring drama, and fierce passion that weaves a wondrous, unbreakable spell.In a land of forbidding castles, sacred prophecies, and unholy betrayals, mystery surrounds the one woman who holds the key to an ancient legacy.
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