Broken Crescent

From Booklist Nate Black used to be Azrael, a hacker who broke every system he could. Now reformed, he is in school for network security. When he receives an e-mail from "@," indicating that someone knows about Azrael, he assumes it's the feds and panics. Somehow, this results in him landing in another world, populated by humans and the alien ghadi, in which he doesn't speak the language yet is interrogated by strange, masked figures and tossed in a dungeon to rot. Rescued by Yerith, a small part of a conspiracy to overthrow the rule of the College of Man, Nate learns some history of ghadi-human relations, the regular language, and, when the Shadow College lets him, the God's Language, which imparts the ability to cast spells. The God's Language is taught only by rote, but programmer Nate takes it as a challenge, absorbing enough to overthrow the old order. A fast-paced, entertaining tale of the boundary between magic and science. Regina Schroeder Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved Product Description College student Nate Black is a top-notch computer hacker. But he's long since stopped the kind of hacking that could put him behind bars. Under the guise of his user i.d., Azrael, he has never been discovered. That is, until Nate gets an anonymous email, after which nothing will ever be the same. He's abducted to an alien world, where magic is the rule, the gods are all too real, and a twist of fate makes him the most valuable pawn in a terrifying game of power.