Song for Telmerion

This is the final of four parts in the Dawnbringer: Lightborn series, bringing to a conclusion the dramatic events unfolding in prior volumes. The War of Darkness now draws on to its highest intensity and its climax, and the forces of humanity are marshaled against their mysterious and dreadful foe. Here an evil that until now has remained elusive, even as it inflicts destruction, is unveiled in all its horror; and yet in the same moment the path to its very heart is made known, and the possibility of a true confrontation between light and darkness, bearing hope of redemption even when all other hopes falter and all other lights go out.Lightborn is the centerpiece of the Dawnbringer series of novels in the world of Irándiel, upon the small continent of Telmérion, cold and rugged and yet inhabited since the beginning of human history by the first family of humankind. Though the setting is high fantasy—a work of co-creative imagination fashioning a mythical world with its own history and geography—the plot and the ins-and-outs of the world are deeply realistic, portraying as it were an ancient and long-forgotten past of our own world. Or more precisely, what is offered here is a mythical exposition of the true past that we all share—with very little magic or other fantasy tropes, but with a great deal of "e;magic,"e; in other words, a world filled with wonders and terrors of all kinds, from the ancient guardians of the world, the Anaíon, to vicious and deadly beasts such as dragons, eötenga, and vru'ádach. The characters thus find themselves caught in the cosmic battle between light and darkness, between the weakness of love and the power of hate, which casts its rays and its shadows also into the heart of every man and woman. The journey marked out before their feet calls for integrity, fidelity, and heroism, and also something more, something that lies at the heart of every good adventure and every life, and which is the very measure of man.