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Star Ascendant
The Star Shadow Trilogy—Book One
Prequel to The Time Master Trilogy
"How strong are you? That's all that matters, you see. Your strength. Your ability to look on the face of Chaos and stay sane. That's how we're all judged, here."
Twelve years as a Chaos Rider had taught Benetan Liss the truth of those ominous words. Yet despite the terrors and demands of his work, he was loyal to his masters and devoted to Chaos's seven formidable gods… until a new First Magus came to power. For Lord Vordegh was far worse than a mere tyrant, and the obsession that drove him was one in which sanity had no place.
On the first bitter night of the new reign, the mask of compliance that Benetan had worn for so long began to crack. And behind the mask lay a road to nightmare.
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Louise Cooper began writing stories when she was at school to entertain her friends. She continued to write and her first full-length novel was published when she was only twenty years old. Since then she has become a prolific writer of fantasy, renowned for her bestselling Time Master trilogy. Her other interests include music, folklore, mythology and comparative religion.
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Excerpt
A jolt of raw power slammed into him as the terrible fusion between man and demon beast engulfed his reeling senses. The courtyard turned and toppled about him and he uttered a high, ululating yell that was taken up by his fellow riders, a hungry and feverish celebration of energy, desire, madness. He raised his left arm high so that the gauntlet’s claws caught the angry moonlight, and in his altered, churning vision they seemed to flash five searing bolts that spat upward into the night. Lightning answered from the heavens, and the northern and eastern spires crackled and sang again. Benetan felt the moment coming, felt the Warp's awesome power building to a crescendo, thrumming through his bones.
A titanic howl smashed against his eardrums, and the sky split open. Blinding light turned the courtyard to an inferno, and the Chaos creatures shrieked a wild challenge in harmony with the voice of the breaking storm as the mass of riders surged forward like a black, breaking wave, with Benetan screaming at their head. Possessed, inspired, deranged, his mind was no longer his own; the gates within him had opened, as the Chaos Gate was even now opening far below him, and humanity was drowned in the dervish joy of the warrior, the hunter, the reaper, as the demonic riders streamed through the gate to be unleashed upon the world.
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