Child of the River: The First Book of Confluence (Confluence Trilogy (Paperback))

On the world of Confluence, where thousands of bloodlines compete for position in a society abandoned by its creators, the mysterious appearance of a youth of indeterminable heritage portends either the world’s end or a new beginning. Yama’s search for his origins leads him from the faded necropolis of Aeolis to the fabled metropolis of Ys, bringing him closer to the secret of his past while simultaneously plunging him into the midst of a convoluted war of politics and religion. McAuley’s (Fairyland, Avon, 1996) latest novel launches an ambitious sf/fantasy saga set against a richly detailed world of ancient technology and forbidden magics. A good addition to most sf or fantasy collections. Where all things flow together...everything comes apart. Untold millennia ago, the Preservers made the world called Confluence and peopled it with ten thousand extraordinary bloodlines "shaped" from beasts of every sort. Then the Preservers abandoned their creation - leaving behind their law, their bureaucracies...and their trillions of machines, awake or slumbering, in the soil and the water and the air. In the Preservers' absence war came - and a dangerous heresy arose that split the world in two. But a babe swept in on the great river, cradled in the arms of death - the last and, perhaps, greatest of a remarkable bloodline - and now the end times are at hand. And as Yama grows to young manhood, he will make his way from necropolis to metropolis - and through the labrynthine country of the mind - in search of a past and a lost destiny. Each hairbreadth escape will make Yama stronger. And every unanticipated adventure will bring him one step closer to the staggering truth about his heritage and his purpose...and about a world that is not what it appears to be. One man's quest to discover the secret of his parentage brings him to a great metropolis, called Confluence, teeming with strange creatures, where he learns that he is the last survivor of a dynasty gifted with preternatural powers. Reprint. A man's quest to discover the secret of his parentage brings him to agreat metropolis, called Confluence, teeming with strange creatures, where he learns that he is the last survivor of a dynasty gifted with preternatural powers