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

Amazon.com Review Paul J. McAuley has won just about all the awards named for science fiction authors: the Philip K. Dick, the Arthur C. Clarke, and the John W. Campbell Memorial. McAuley is a true wordsmith, an author's author, and in Child of the River , he has not only written an outstanding novel, he has created a universe. While fans of Gene Wolfe and Mervyn Peake might be taken aback by McAuley's stylistic imitation of those two luminaries, why look a gift horse in the mouth? McAuley's vision is original enough, as well as complex and entertaining enough, to keep a demanding reader engrossed. Child of the River tells the story of Yama, a young man of unique heritage in a world of genetically altered beings. The river world Confluence is a place of crumbling, ancient cities and machines so old and mysterious they seem like magic. From the vast necropolis of Aeolis to the engimatic metropolis of Ys, Yama seeks the truth about himself, and the universe. With Child of the River , McAuley begins a trilogy examining the death of a breathtakingly epic civilization. --Therese Littleton From Library Journal 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. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. 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. 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