Hecate's Glory

by Karen Michalson

Karen Michalson burst on the scene recently with a new fantasy saga in the tradition of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. Beginning with Enemy Glory, now continues with Hecate's Glory. "A grand-scale fantasy taking place in an exotic realm where religion and magic vie for prominence," said Library Journal.

Llewelyn is now a clerical wizard, one whose power derives not from mere arcane knowledge, but directly from Hecate, the goddess to whom he is pledged as consort. After disillusionment in love and betrayal in politics, he is an angry young student in a monastery, bonded to a dark goddess, a magician ready to fight the world.

In Llewelyn's world, the realm of the supernatural lies in the North, while warring kingdoms and a complex religion devoted to gods and goddesses of good and evil dominate the South. Llewelyn schemes for revenge and creates a disaster that forces him out of the monastery and back into the wide world, where he must flee north to escape the Emperor Roguehan, for whom he has been an unreliable spy. Fleeing the enemy, he knows, he will encounter new foes, not so easily recognized.

As Llewelyn travels, the story opens out into broader panoramas of his fascinating world. He will meet an enchanted dragon, befriend a half-elf minstrel, win a claim to the royal throne of far-off Gondal, and face a battle fought by an elven army.

Genres: Dark Fantasy

480 pages, Hardcover

Published February 22, 2003

About the author

Karen Michalson has taught nineteenth-century British literature and practiced criminal law. Defending the canon, defending the accused. You say there's a difference?

She’s also written four novels, most recently The Maenad’s God, which was selected by Independent Book Review as one of the best novels of 2022. Her earlier novels: Enemy Glory, Hecate's Glory, and The King's Glory; form the Enemy Glory trilogy. Enemy Glory was one of the books that received the most votes for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was chosen for Locus‘s Recommended Reading List of Best First Novels.

Her first book, Victorian Fantasy Literature: Literary Battles with Church and Empire, examines the non-literary and non-aesthetic reasons underlying the bias in favor of realism in the formation of the traditional literary canon of nineteenth-century British fiction.

Somewhere between literature and law, she learned bass guitar, formed a rock band, Point of Ares, and toured the USA. Point Of Ares released four concept albums, two of which are based on her Enemy Glory books.

She keeps a blog called Matter Notes, where she writes about the war on the humanities, creativity as spirituality, and her observations on culture and society as a self-described New England recluse: http://www.karenmichalson.com/blog