He calls himself Farouche, after a character from legend, but his reality is that his memories and identity were stolen from him by a secret enemy.
In a far-future world of wizards and walled cities, he finds himself trailing a wealthy merchant's caravan across a dusty plain. Possessed of a soldier's skills, he hires on with the merchant and begins to build a life. But his efforts to discover his past reveal a dark prospect: was he a participant in a notorious massacre of innocents?
Will Farouche come to know the truth? Will he survive the journey across a lawless land to the remote city of Olliphract, ruled by half-mad thaumaturges? And when he finally lays bare the plot in which he has been ensnared, will it be too late?
Matthew Hughes delivers another dark fantastical adventure set in a decadent Dying Earth, where men and half-men and even the gods themselves contend for earthly power and unearthly prizes.
A God in Chains is a Dying Earth adventure of men, half-men, and gods and is the latest Matthew Hughes' Archonate series novel.
"Hughes's boldness is admirable" -- New York Review of Science Fiction
Matthew Hughes writes fantasy and space opera, often in a Jack Vance mode. Booklist has called him Vance's "heir apparent."
His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, F&SF, Postscripts, Lightspeed, and Interzone, and invitation-only anthologies including Songs of the Dying Earth, Rogues, Old Mars, Old Venus, The Book of Swords, and The Book of Magic, all edited by George R. R. Martin and/or Gardner Dozois.
He has won the Arthur Ellis Award, and has been shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick, Aurora, Nebula, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards.
He spent more than thirty years as one of Canada's leading speechwriters for political leaders and corporate executives. Since 2007, he has been traveling the world as an itinerant housesitter, has lived in twelve countries, and has no fixed address.
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