On a dodecahedral world in thrall to the tyrannical, war-obsessed Hrag dynasty, no one could stop the Bloodlord from sending troops to Florengia, invading its major cities, and offering them a choice between strict colonial rule or immediate and total destruction. When the doge of Celebre was faced with this ultimatum, he gave his children up as hostages so that the rest of Celebre might live. Thus the four young Florengians were taken back over the Edge and scattered across the Vigaelian face. Fifteen years later, when Celebre suddenly takes on crucial political significance, one of the siblings must return home to serve as Celebre's puppet ruler and the others must be eliminated so that there are no rival claimants to the throne. It's going to be tough enough finding each other, let alone deciding whether enough kinship remains after fifteen years apart that the siblings care enough to help each other out of their respective predicaments. If they're feeling particularly altruistic, the Celebres might even take on the bonus trying to save Dodec from the culture of death and war imposed on it by its evil warlords. One thing's for the Celebre children are going to have a lot of adjusting to do . . Children of Chaos is the start of a stirring, politically-charged quest duology by acclaimed fantasy author Dave Duncan.

The past fifteen years have not been kind to Celebre, the greatest city on the Florengian face of a dodecahedral world. Its walls have been breached and its Doge humiliated by the evil Bloodlord Stralg; all four of its heirs kidnapped and taken over the Edge to Vigaelia; its Dogaressa forcibly impregnated by Stralg and—when her husband's health begins to fail—left to rule over a city teeming with Stralg's troops. And if you think Stralg is bad, wait until you meet his sister Saltaja, a fanatic who sees no human cost as too great to keep the Hrag dynasty in power and her goddess—evil Xaran, the Mother of Lies—appeased. But there are a few great hopes for the future of the city: the Mutineer, Marno Cavotti, who will not stand to see his hometown destroyed and is massing a powerful liberation movement mere inches beyond Stralg's grasp. And the four heirs of Celebre—each with god-given expertise in their respective fields of artistry, combat, wisdom, or death—are wending their way back over the Edge to their birthplace. Of course, even as Marno and the Celebre children are working towards the common goal of defeating the Hrags, they're all painfully aware that once that hurdle is crossed only one of them can wind up on the throne. Continuing the storyline set out in Children of Chaos, Mother of Lies is a fierce, kinetic romp that will keep readers guessing until the last blow is dealt.