Salt of the Air

By Vera Nazarian

2006

First Published

3.89

Average Rating

372

Number of Pages

11H21M

Audio Length

You are familiar with the salt of the earth. But did you know there is an even finer, more delicate essence? Take wisdom and imagination, responsibility and beauty, and mix them together in arcane proportions to form a rich and peculiar brine. The resulting water of life is an emotional muddy liquid, filled with existential sediment swirling in the light of secret reality and reflecting prismatic colors of hope and wonder. If allowed to evaporate- escape, flee, ascend into the ether and join the music of the spheres-what remains is the quintessence; a precious concentrate that is elusive and volatile, neither fully solid nor so illusory as to be devoid of pithy substance. It is the Salt of the Air. In this debut collection from the critically acclaimed author of Dreams of the Compass Rose and Lords of Rainbow, the sixteen stories are distillations of myth and philosophy, eroticism and ascetic purity. Dipping into an ancient multi-ethnic well, they are the stuff of fantasy-of maidens and deities and senior retirees, of kings and artists and con artists, of warriors and librarians, of beings without a name and things very fey indeed...

Avg Rating

3.89

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

37%

4 STARS

23%

3 STARS

31%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Vera Nazarian

Author · 22 books

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist, award-winning artist, and member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a writer with a penchant for moral fables and stories of intense wonder, true love, and intricacy. She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages. She is the author of critically acclaimed novels Dreams of the Compass Rose and Lords of Rainbow , romantic Renaissance epic fantasy trilogy Cobweb Bride , as well as the outrageous parodies Mansfield Park and Mummies and Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons , Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy's Dreadful Secret in her humorous and surprisingly romantic Supernatural Jane Austen Series , and most recently the bestselling high-octane science fiction series The Atlantis Grail , now optioned for film. After many years in Los Angeles, Vera lives in a small town in Vermont, and uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art. Take the fun quiz to find out Which of the Lords of Rainbow do You Serve?