Newly Arrived

Come just in time for the Glorious Fourth was a box of the uncorrected proofs of Quillifer the Knight, which will be available in bookstores the first week in November, the date having been moved, apparently, from the first week in October.

All the better for the holidays!

Here’s the flap copy:

Rogue. Joker. Lover. Reluctant conspirator.

The bumptious, ambitious young Quillifer has been knighted for services to the crown, but was then banished from court by a queen who finds him obnoxious.  Now, after a two-year voyage to improve his fortunes, Quillifer returns to court and is plunged immediately into a maelstrom of intrigue that triggers duels, plots, amours, and rollicking adventure.   Bounding back and forth from the high councils of state to the warm bed of his mistress, Quillifer must exert every ounce of seductive charm and low cunning in order to survive.

Queen Berlauda’s foreign husband brings war in his wake, along with a clutch of officials who enforce the royal will with violence, torture, and judicial murder. A dragon menaces the realm, and political conspiracy threatens the life of Quillifer’s young patroness, Princess Floria. It’s the traditional job of a knight to fight dragons and rescue princesses, but Quillifer is hardly a traditional knight, and he brings to the job an array of unorthodox skills that dazzles his swarm of rivals, seduces their wives, and threatens to overset the realm.

But there’s a greater menace to Quillifer than deadly political intrigue, for once again he finds himself hunted by the cruel, beautiful, and vengeful goddess Orlanda.

“ . . . chockful of derring-do, blood and thunder, swashbuckling, and other good stuff evocative of Rafael Sabatini, Sir Walter Scott, and the penny-bloods: venomous and dangerous court politesse, reversals, betrayals, cowardice, heroism, illicit sex, allegorical theatrical productions, dangerous hunting expeditions, privateering and, at last, open warfare . . . it’s not precisely a tale of Swords and Sorcery. Rather, you might dub it Rogues and Rogering.” 

                                                            —Paul Di Filippo, on Quillifer