The Scroll of Years

A Gaunt and Bone Novel

Chris Willrich

270 pp • ISBN 978-1-61614-813-3
September 2013 • $15.95
Cover Illustration © Kerem Beyit

It's Brent Weeks meets China Mieville in this wildly imaginative fantasy debut featuring high action, elegant writing, and sword and sorcery
with a Chinese flare.


Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are a romantic couple and partners in crime. Persimmon is a poet from a well-to-do family, who found herself looking for adventure, while Imago is a thief in his ninth decade who is double-cursed, and his body has not aged in nearly seventy years. Together, their services and wanderlust have taken them into places better left unseen, and against odds best not spoken about. Now, they find themselves looking to get away, to the edge of the world, with Persimmon pregnant with their child, and the most feared duo of assassins hot on their trail. However, all is never what it seems, and a sordid adventure-complete with magic scrolls, gangs of thieves, and dragons both eastern and western-is at hand.


Reviews

"Reading Chris Willrich feels a bit like playing Dungeons and Dragons® with a drunken Will Shakespeare. Great fun, and beautifully written."
Saladin Ahmed, Hugo award-nominated
author of Throne of the Crescent Moon


"Willrich puts the mystery back in magic and the majesty back in dragons. Gaunt and Bone are the Han and Leia of heroic fantasy."
Howard Tayler, creator of the Hugo award-nominated Schlock Mercenary

"Willrich's beautifully written debut paints a vivid, richly imagined world populated by delightfully memorable characters…. This fantastical quest story contains witty narration, well-drawn characters, and a fast-moving plot."
Publishers Weekly

"A literary take on classic swords and sorcery, combining the droll tone and the adventure of Fritz Leiber with the lushness and profoundness of Catherynne M. Valente. Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are just as delightful when pondering poetry or philosophy as when stealing a magic sword."
Scott H. Andrews, editor of the acclaimed magazine
Beneath Ceaseless Skies


"I loved it. A polished blend of action, compelling characters, fantastic world building, and masterful prose."
Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls