Part of Series
In the steppes of High Asia, the year 1188… ‘Jamuqa rode his trophy mare, off-white, black-pointed, on a Tartar seat, high arches of ornamental silver fore and aft. He wore a winterfur of snow leopard, near white with black whorls. The effect was kingly and fantastic: he might be Irle Khan himself, the king of ghosts, in his eerie splendour.’ Aged twenty, Temujin has been named Tchingis, khan over the Mongols. But only a third of his people accept a kingship based on dreams and omens. His own sworn brother Jamuqa challenges his title, and comes in the guise of a mock king against him. The steppe has been without a great khan for three hundred years – fragmented in the face of giant China. Are dreams and omens enough to unify its peoples? What makes a true king? Amgalant gives voice to the Mongols in their explosive encounter with the great world under Tchingis Khan. Both epic and intimate, Amgalant sees the world through Mongol eyes. It’s different from the world you know. ‘Amgalant brings to life a complex, remote society with amazing immediacy’
Author
Bryn Hammond lives in a coastal town in Australia, where she likes to write while walking in the sea. She grew up on ancient and medieval epics, the Arthur cycle original and modern, nineteenth-century novelists, particularly Russian and French, and out-of-fashion poets, namely Algernon Swinburne. Always a writer – to the neglect of other paths in life that might have been more sensible – she found the perfect story in The Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century prose and verse account of Chinggis Khan. Her Amgalant series is a version and interpretation of this original. Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe is her craft essay, a case study of creative engagement with a primary source. Other work in The Knot Wound Round Your Finger (Bell Press), Ergot., Queer Weird West Tales (LIBRAtiger), New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine.
