Book description
Shrewd, devious, cunning and a born liar - but as a Court Jester, Jad's
a disaster. So when he's sent off with the warlord's son, Prince Kender,
on a spying mission, he's hoping that his less desirable traits will
actually save his life. Since the Day of Wonder, when all the electric
lights stopped working, there have been rumours of unrest in the
neighbouring domains...and no one has seen hide nor hair of any of the
Elite, the ruthless technocrat class that have ruled Urba for centuries.
What most of the inhabitants don't realise is that their world of Urba
is actually a giant spacecraft, an ark built more than a thousand years
ago to save as much of the Earth's population as possible before the sun
went nova. The Elite were originally the ship's crew, and as a social
experiment, the ship's population were forced to live a pseudo-mediaeval
life...and as the centuries passed, the Elite became decadent, corrupt
and cruel and the truth about Urba became hidden. And now Jad and his
courageous - if thick - Prince are about to find out what happened to
the Elite - and what's happening to the people of Urba...
John Brosnan (1947 - 2005)
John Raymond Brosnan was born in Perth, Australia, in 1947 but lived in
London for all his adult life. He wrote most of the film entries in the
first edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and his
influential books on the movies, include the seminal The Horror People
, Future Tense: The Cinema of Science Fiction
and The Primal Screen: A History of Science Fiction Film
, as well as a number of acclaimed fantasy and SF novels. He died in
2005.
