Book description
The Heart of the World is a land in strife. For fifty years the Holy
Empire of Mann, an empire and religion born from a nihilistic urban
cult, has been conquering nation after nation. Their leader, Holy
Matriarch Sasheen, ruthlessly maintains control through her Diplomats,
priests trained as subtle predators.
The Mercian Free Ports are the only confederacy yet to fall. Their only
land link to the southern continent, a long and narrow isthmus, is
protected by the city of Bar-Khos. For ten years now, the great southern
walls of Bar-Khos have been besieged by the Imperial Fourth Army.
Ash is a member of an elite group of assassins, the R shun - who offer
protection through the threat of vendetta. Forced by his ailing health
to take on an apprentice, he chooses Nico, a young man living in the
besieged city of Bar-Khos. At the time, Nico is hungry, desperate, and
alone in a city that finds itself teetering on the brink.
When the Holy Matriarch’s son deliberately murders a woman under the
protection of the R shun; he forces the sect to seek his life in
retribution. As Ash and his young apprentice set out to fulfil the R
shun orders - their journey takes them into the heart of the conflict
between the Empire and the Free Ports . . . into bloodshed and death.
Colin Buchanan was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, in 1973. The one
constant in his life has been his love of writing. It was writing that
lead him to his adopted home of Lancaster, England, where he gained a
First in Creative Writing & Religious Studies at the University of
Cumbria. In recent years he has mostly settled down, and loves nothing
more than a late-night gathering around a fire with good friends. Farlander
is the first novel in the Heart of the World series...
