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    The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain: Book One
    Unavailable
    The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain: Book One
    Unavailable
    The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain: Book One
    Ebook824 pages12 hours

    The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain: Book One

    By Sara Douglass

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Sara Douglass has won legions of fans around the world for her epic tales of sorcery, forbidden love, and heart-pounding action. Now, with the DarkGlass Mountain saga, she reveals her biggest adventure yet.

    Rescued from unspeakable horror, Ishbel Brunelle has devoted her life to a Serpent cult that reads the future in the entrails of its human sacrifices. But the Serpent has larger plans for Ishbel than merely being archpriestess, plans that call for a dangerous royal marriage balancing on the edge between treachery and devotion, and an eerie, eldritch warning: Prepare for the Lord of Elcho Falling . . .

    And there are other dangers. For while Tencendor is gone, even its fall cannot destroy the Icarii. As the Tyrant of Isembaard reaches for glory, both StarDrifter SunSoar and his son, Axis, are pulled into the deadly dance of intrigue and sorcery. The DarkGlass Mountain—once known as the Threshold—is waiting, and as the Dark God Kanubai rises from his prison in exile, no one will escape unscathed.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061796876
    Unavailable
    The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain: Book One
    Author

    Sara Douglass

    Sara Douglass was born in Adelaide but moved to Hobart in later life to write full time. She died in Hobart in September 2011. She was a lecturer in mediaeval history for La Trobe University for many years and was the first author to be published on the Australian Voyager imprint in 1995. She published 19 books of epic and historical fantasy with Voyager. She has won the Norma K Hemming award, the Australian Shadow's Award and was nominated three times for the US-based Reviewer's Choice awards.

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    Reviews for The Serpent Bride

    3.5/5

    12 ratings9 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I'll state right off the bat that some of my problems with this book are probably due to the fact that, while it starts a trilogy, it builds on earlier books set in the same world. As a result, some events felt like they should have more impact than they did.However, my main problems were definitely due to specific elements of the book. For one thing, when we first see the female lead (who is supposed to be sympathetic) as an adult, she is sacrificing a conscious and apparently innocent man to communicate with her god (who is not supposed to be an evil god). Much later, it's revealed that the cult only uses murderers, rapists, and the like or (extremely rare) volunteers for these sacrifices, and the volunteers are sedated before the ritual, but there's too much of a gap involved for this revelation to really help the reader's image of the character.Also, throughout the book, it seems like every character not allied with the evil forces manages to do the worst possible thing for their side. While this isn't quite so bad for characters who have no idea of what's really going on (even if the apparent consistency of the bad choices is a bit much), this extends to the avatars of the gods trying to stop the coming apocalypse and mitigate the damage caused by the lead-in not telling each other limits they're working under and doing things that they should know are bad ideas. Even with the characters who don't know what's at stake, some actions felt more like they were done for story reasons rather than because they made sense to the characters based on what they knew.Finally, there is a problem with scale. Two separate armies are described using "millions" in relation to their numbers. One of these (the larger, and never given a more accurate count than "millions") is, admittedly, non-human and basically devouring everything in its path, but the other is human, and numbered at over a million including colonists who are to settle the lands as soon as they're conquered. There is a good story reason for this set-up, but the logistics of supplying and moving such a large group would be difficult at present, much less in the pseudo-medieval setting of the story. Similarly, one country (which is not a major setting for most of the story, admittedly) seems to have been unaffected by a nearby continent having been destroyed in the recent past, an event which should have caused severe earthquakes and tsunamis, at least. The continent's destruction was in a different book, though, so I could be mistaken about the effects it did or should have had.
    • 3/5
      Gripping plot, but writing style was disjointed and tended to pull me out of the flow of the story.
    • 1/5
      .....
    • 5/5
      i
    • 5/5
      Warning to new readers: to understand half of what's going on in this series, you should read The Wayfarer Redemption first. I recommend to read books 1-3 in that series. If you like that, then skip books 4-6, and then read Threshold and then to this book. Optional extra would be Beyond the Hanging Wall. I missed those last two the first time I read this series and they would have helped, but I feel that they are not vital. Beyond the Hanging Wall is kind of generic, but Threshold is one of my all-time favorites.

      Take my opinions as you will!

      Plot summary:
      The series starts off with Ishbel, who is similar in many ways to Faraday from the Wayfarer Redemption series. She is being forced to marry a man against her will because her god, the Great Serpent, demands it.

      Pan to her potential husband, king Maximilian (from Beyond the Hanging Wall). He's conveniently had no luck finding a bride until he gets this offer from Ishbel's people. It intrigues him... and scares him, since the mountain that she comes from has a deeper meaning known only to him. Is it coincidence, or something more sinister?

      Switch to Isaiah, tyrant-king of the lands to the south. Through magic, he brings to life Axis SunSoar (from the Wayfarer Redemption) to be his friend and ally in war. See, Isaiah wants to conquer the lands in the north, where Ishbel and Maximilian are.

      Not far from Isaiah's capital city is an Egyptian-style pyramid: the DarkGlass Mountain. It's an evil structure that was once called Threshold (from Threshold) and it's harboring a great evil that is trying to break free.

      Cut to Lister in the frozen wastes of the very far north, leading a horde of Skraeling wraiths (from the Wayfarer Redemption). He is allying with Isaiah to coordinate the conquest of the central kingdoms.

      Return to Ishbel and Maximilian who can't decide if they love and trust each other or not. See, Ishbel often has dreams of a man who will encompass her world in despair. And Maximilian has his own problems, worried about mysterious and weighty responsibilities that hang about his shoulders.

      Oh, and don't forget these lands to the west. StarDrifter SunSoar (from the Wayfarer Redemption) is wasting his life away there until the plot calls for him, too, to join the fray.

      Are you still with me? It's a lot of politicking at first until everyone finally realizes they need to band together to face the threat of the evil from the pyramid. Except some decide to ally themselves with the evil or focus on their own interests instead.

      As I think about it, I really don't know why I love this series so much. I think it's because Sara Douglass has a way of intertwining all these separate stories into a cohesive whole, and you don't know what will happen next. It's an art that I envy.

      I think this volume (in particular, the first third to half) is my favorite in the trilogy. As you get into the later volumes, you kind of miss the humble beginnings the series started with. You know, just Ishbel and Maximilian trying to get to know each other while the world falls apart around them. Before the Lealfast get in involved. Before the One. Before the betrayals and heartbreaks ...

      If you like the Wayfarer Redemption, then you should like this.
    • 4/5
      I've been a fan of Sara Douglass' spellbinding stories ever since I picked up The Wayfarer Redemption (or by its original name, Axis). Even though I was somewhat slow on getting into her DarkGlass Mountain trilogy, I figured now was as good a time as even to pick it up.In The Serpent Bride, readers meet Ishbel, a woman who was rescued from death as a child by the high priest of a group called the Coil, a strange outland snake cult that tells the future by reading the intestines from living sacrifices. Doesn't exactly sound like a good thing to grow up around, but Ishbel didn't have much choice. Ishbel, a child of power to the Coil, grows up to become the cult's arch priestess. Ishbel is resolved to never marry or leave her home until she sees a vision from the Serpent god, telling her that she must marry the king of Esctar, a land far away from her home. She reluctantly agrees and marries the strange king known as Maxil. That small step flings Ishbel into a strange, unknown world where she gets tangled in webs of romance, politics and war.While the setup seems like a great way to begin a new series, the most surprising thing about The Serpent Bride is the fact that well, it isn't very new. I hate to say it, but it reads much like Douglass' previous novels, easily paralleling the plot and characters. The aspect that upset me the most about this series was the fact that Douglass pulled Axis and StarDrifter back into the story. While I do think it's pretty cool that she's trying to connect all of her stories into one giant megaverse, I think that pulling this two characters and the Icarii into The Serpent Bride, and giving them all important roles in the story completely detracted the story from new characters -which I were far more interested in getting to know. For crying out loud -I've read about Axis for six books, I think it's time to just let him go, but honestly I think Douglass is having trouble letting her beloved first character go.Douglass' writing is as fluid and lush as always, in fact, that's one of the few things that got me through this book. I was fascinated by the new elements that she wove together, but I couldn't quite get into them due to the stale nature of previous characters being recycled.I wouldn't say The Serpent Bride is a complete failure, it's still entertaining and lush, but it reads more like Axis book seven than something new...
    • 4/5
      The story opens with Ishbel losing her family at a young age and being rescued by the Coil, where she is brought up and becomes the arch priestess of that order. Then she's ordered to go to Maximilian in Escator and become his wife.Maximilian is torn, the coil have a terrible reputation but he needs them for his kingdom to continue. And that's just the beginning of the story, it includes kidnapping, great evil trying to get free of it's prison and overarching plotting that both complicates and helps our heroes. I enjoyed the story and found that it moved quite quickly.
    • 4/5
      Not sure how I never knew about Sara Douglass until last year! This book does bring characters from other books and series, but it only causes a minor hiccup in reading because there is plenty going on in this novel to hold your interest. The members of The Coil are mysterious and strange. Maximillian and Axis and the others are fantastic characters and I cannot wait to read the next book. I even got the Axis trilogy to catch up on him!
    • 5/5
      I am glad to report that Sara Douglass is back on form in this latest novel. I was thoroughly involved in the story and really liked how she combined many of her previous novels into this one. It lacked the problems of her earlier Tencendor series, and I hope she keeps it up, which she hasn't managed well in the past. My only problem with it was that I'll have to wait years for the next!