Margins
Korre book cover 1
Korre book cover 2
Korre
Series · 2 books · 2005-2008

Books in series

Talyn book cover
#1

Talyn

2005

In a world where technology is magic, and war is the only way of life, Talyn is a soldier, one of thousands trained from childhood to protect her country from the monarchist Eastil, who would take away the personal freedoms of the Tonk. Talyn long ago embraced her fate: to die in battle. This is a war of magic, not of swords, and the battles are fought deep inside the View, a place where the magic inherent in everything and everyone is actualized. The soldiers—on both sides—can bring this magic to the physical plane and use it to destroy houses, fields, and people. But the Feegash came from across the world, and demanded to be allowed to negotiate peace between the Eastil and the Tonk for the sake of the rest of the world. Their success meant Talyn was out of a job, and at a loss for what to do with her life. Rather than follow most of her fellow soldiers to jobs in other parts of the world, Talyn stayed with her family in her town—and there she is seduced by a Feegash diplomat. With him she experiences a dark side of herself that she hadn't even imagined, and learns a new kind of magery. And she discovers the mistreatment of Eastil prisoners of war, still in Tonk hands, and weighs her life against saving theirs. It's a matter of honor—and her honor will be challenged again and again as she slowly discovers that what the Feegash have brought with them was not peace but an overwhelming oppression, and an evil so insidious no one noticed it until it was too late. But if Talyn can hone her use of the Feegash flesh-magery, she can turn their own magic back against them. With the help of one of the Eastil prisoners, she might be able to use it to save the Tonk andthe Eastil, and defeat the Feegash once and for all... if it doesn't destroy her from the inside out first.
Hawkspar book cover
#2

Hawkspar

A Novel of Korre

2008

Stolen away from their families, they are slaves, women with no names and no futures. Every moment of their days controlled by the avatars of the stone Eyes—Obsidian, Emerald, Raxinan, Ruby, Windcrystal, Sapphire, Sunspar, Tigereye... And the most powerful of them all, Hawkspar, the eyes of time. Kings and despots come to her to know their futures, and she wades in the river of time, pulls apart its sticky threads, to arrange the world to her satisfaction. But she too was once a slave, plucked from her home, chosen by the Eyes to live in service to them, as much a slave now as she ever was. And with her sight into past and future, she can see the secrets of the Eyes—and the evil of the Eyes. Before the death of Hawkspar, another must be chosen by the Eyes—but the avatar has her own plans, and chooses a slave for her courage and rebelliousness, rather than her dedication to the goals of the Eyes. This slave is put to trial, but time after time, she is protected by forces unseen. Once she has swallowed the bitter liquid and has her eyes pulled from her head and replaced with the Eyes of Hawkspar stone, she can slip into the streams of time... and use time to her own ends—to free the slaves once and for all, and destroy the Eyes, even if it means destroying herself in the process.

Author

Holly Lisle
Holly Lisle
Author · 45 books

Holly Lisle has been writing fiction professionally since 1991, when she sold FIRE IN THE MIST, the novel that won her the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. She has to date published more than thirty novels and several comprehensive writing courses. She has just published WARPAINT, the second stand-alone novel in her Cadence Drake series. Holly had an ideal childhood for a writer…which is to say, it was filled with foreign countries and exotic terrains, alien cultures, new languages, the occasional earthquake, flood, or civil war, and one story about a bear, which follows: “So. Back when I was ten years old, my father and I had finished hunting ducks for our dinner and were walking across the tundra in Alaska toward the spot on the river where we’d tied our boat. We had a couple miles to go by boat to get back to the Moravian Children’s Home, where we lived. “My father was carrying the big bag of decoys and the shotgun; I was carrying the small bag of ducks. “It was getting dark, we could hear the thud, thud, thud of the generator across the tundra, and suddenly he stopped, pointed down to a pie-pan sized indentation in the tundra that was rapidly filling with water, and said, in a calm and steady voice, “That’s a bear footprint. From the size of it, it’s a grizzly. The fact that the track is filling with water right now means the bear’s still around.” “Which got my attention, but not as much as what he said next. ” ‘I don’t have the gun with me that will kill a bear,’ he told me. ‘I just have the one that will make him angry. So if we see the bear, I’m going to shoot him so he’ll attack me. I want you to run to the river, follow it to the boat, get the boat back home, and tell everyone what happened.’ “The rest of our walk was very quiet. He was, I’m sure, listening for the bear. I was doing my damnedest to make sure that I remembered where the boat was, how to get to it, how to start the pull-cord engine, and how to drive it back home, because I did not want to let him down. “We were not eaten by a bear that night…but neither is that walk back from our hunt for supper a part of my life I’ll ever forget. “I keep that story in mind as I write. If what I’m putting on paper isn’t at least as memorable as having a grizzly stalking my father and me across the tundra while I was carrying a bag of delicious-smelling ducks, it doesn’t make my cut.” You can find Holly on her personal site: Hollylisle.com You can find Cadence Drake, Holly's currently in-progress series, on her site: CadenceDrake.com You can find Holly's books, courses, writing workshops, and so on here: The HowToThinkSideways.com Shop, as well as on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in a number of bookstores in the US and around the world.

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