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    The Walker of the Shifting Borderland
    The Walker of the Shifting Borderland
    The Walker of the Shifting Borderland
    Ebook43 pages30 minutes

    The Walker of the Shifting Borderland

    By Douglas Smith

    ()

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    About this ebook

    AURORA AWARD WINNER

     

    The Walker is a child of the two Realms of the Continuum, a prince of Order and of Chaos—and a rebel against both. When he falls in love with an ephemeral, a mortal woman who is the key to the balance between the Realms, he triggers a struggle for her life—and the fate of her universe. 

    Fantasy short story

     

    Reviews

     

    "A very different sort of tale. ... A cosmic story of gods which seems to be inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock, and I think he would not be ashamed of it. —SF Crowsnest Reviews

     

    "A tale of epic love when a mortal gets caught between a battle of the gods. Smith reminds us that we have the potential to change the world around us and that self-sacrifice can be a means of making the world around us better." —Speculating Canada

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Smith
    Release dateMar 28, 2015
    ISBN9781928048190
    The Walker of the Shifting Borderland
    Author

    Douglas Smith

    Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of Rasputin and Former People, which was a bestseller in the U.K. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has written for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, National Geographic, and Netflix. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U.S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He lives with his family in Seattle.

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      Book preview

      The Walker of the Shifting Borderland - Douglas Smith

      THE WALKER OF THE SHIFTING BORDERLAND

      by Douglas Smith

      Aurora Award WINNER

      The Walker is a child of the two Realms of the Continuum, a prince of Order and of Chaos—and a rebel against both. When he falls in love with an ephemeral, a mortal woman who is the key to the balance between the Realms, he triggers a struggle for her life—and the fate of her universe.

      ~~

      A very different sort of tale. ... A cosmic story of gods which seems to be inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock, and I think he would not be ashamed of it.

      —SF Crowsnest Reviews

      A tale of epic love when a mortal gets caught between a battle of the gods. Smith reminds us that we have the potential to change the world around us and that self-sacrifice can be a means of making the world around us better.

      —Speculating Canada

      The descriptions here have cosmic sweep…

      —Locus Online

      Table of Contents

      DESCRIPTION

      THE WALKER OF THE SHIFTING BORDERLAND

      ABOUT THE STORY

      A REQUEST

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      ALSO BY DOUGLAS SMITH

      THE HOLLOW BOYS

      THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD

      CHIMERASCOPE

      COPYRIGHT

      THE WALKER OF THE SHIFTING BORDERLAND

      THE UNIVERSE ENDED

      at noon.

      Again.

      A very particular universe—the one that held prisoner the creature the Walker loved most in the entire Continuum. The one that held her.

      At ten minutes before noon, the Walker strode out of the Shifting Borderland and into that universe. He landed, a phase shift to the left of local reality, beside a dusty two-lane highway running through a remarkably unremarkable town in a northern landmass on a planet called Earth.

      He stepped forward, phase-synched and visible again, and considered the scene before him, frozen as he had left it under a cold October sky.

      To the west, the Wall of Order loomed over the remains of the town, poised to resume its irresistible advance, waiting to rise row by white-bricked row to crush everything in its path.

      To the east, dark funnel clouds of the Chaos Storm towered unmoving, the debris of destroyed farms and forests hanging frozen in the air as if on hooks from heaven.

      Frozen also, as she faced the approaching cataclysm, stood Henka. His Henka, white cotton blouse and loose fitting jeans pulled tight by the wind, long hair storm-blown and framing her face like a wispy black cloud.

      He had faced this

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