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The Tales of Einarinn
Turns & Chances
An Einarinn novella.
Common cause unites a duke’s beautiful mistress, a stable lad, a goodwife, a priest, the bereft mother of an infant son and guild masters weary of seeing apprentices drafted into brutish militias. Conflicting loyalties set a duke’s dutiful bastard son on a deadly collision course with a journeyman blacksmith with most unexpected skills. In time, the country of Lescar will explode in bloody revolution, but before that comes this classic novella from Juliet E. McKenna.
The ebook edition uses the same magnificent Edward Miller cover art as the paper edition. It also includes an introduction by Chaz Brenchley explaining the insights that led to the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution series.
Common cause unites a duke’s beautiful mistress, a stable lad, a goodwife, a priest, the bereft mother of an infant son and guild masters weary of seeing apprentices drafted into brutish militias. Conflicting loyalties set a duke’s dutiful bastard son on a deadly collision course with a journeyman blacksmith with most unexpected skills. In time, the country of Lescar will explode in bloody revolution, but before that comes this classic novella from Juliet E. McKenna.
The ebook edition uses the same magnificent Edward Miller cover art as the paper edition. It also includes an introduction by Chaz Brenchley explaining the insights that led to the Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution series.
- GenresFantasy
100 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2004
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31 people want to read
About the author
Juliet E. McKenna
102 books235 followersJuliet E McKenna is a British fantasy author living in the Cotswolds, UK. Loving history, myth and other worlds since she first learned to read, she has written fifteen epic fantasy novels so far. Her debut, The Thief’s Gamble, began The Tales of Einarinn in 1999, followed by The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. The Green Man’s Heir was her first modern fantasy inspired by British folklore in 2018. The Green Man’s Quarry in 2023 was the sixth title in this ongoing series and won the BSFA Award for Best Novel. The seventh book, in 2024, is The Green Man’s War.
Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter fiction includes forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for the James White Award, the Aeon Award, the Arthur C Clarke Award and the World Fantasy Awards. In 2015 she received the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.
Who’s to say what will come next?
Learn more about all of this at julietemckenna.com and on Twitter @JulietEMcKenna
Her 2023 novel The Cleaving is a female-centred retelling of the story of King Arthur, while her shorter fiction includes forays into dark fantasy, steampunk and science fiction. She promotes SF&Fantasy by reviewing, by blogging on book trade issues, attending conventions and teaching creative writing. She has served as a judge for the James White Award, the Aeon Award, the Arthur C Clarke Award and the World Fantasy Awards. In 2015 she received the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award. As J M Alvey, she has written historical murder mysteries set in ancient Greece.
Who’s to say what will come next?
Learn more about all of this at julietemckenna.com and on Twitter @JulietEMcKenna
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 24, 2021
love the POV relay in this.
September 6, 2012
Juliet McKenna’s long out-of-print novella “Turns and Chances” has been given a new lease of life in this e-book edition, which features the striking original artwork of the PS publishing version, by Trowbridge-based Wizard’s Tower Press.
The book is set in the world of the “Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution”, at a slightly earlier point along the timeline, but you don’t need to have read the other books in the series to enjoy this one (although I would recommend them highly if you like smart, thoughtful fantasy with heart and punch.) Unusually for High Fantasy, the novella doesn’t focus on the deeds of Kings and mages, but centres on a conspiracy hatched by what George RR Martin would refer to as the “smallfolk”; a blacksmith’s apprentice, a priest, a heartbroken tavern maid, a lord’s mistress, a housewife and her son…
The story is passed from character to character with the smoothness of a relay baton as the conspiracy deepens. It is a conspiracy to bring about peace, to protect the sons of the smallfolk of Lescar from dying on the battlefield at the whim of their ducal masters. The multiple, switching points of view, which could have been overpowering in such a thin novel, are handled deftly and confidently, investing the reader in the fate of characters even after only spending a few pages with them. And the post-battle scenes, while poignant, do not shy away from gruesome detail. The reader also gets a real sense of depth, of the world stretching away beyond the narrow confines of these pages, both in time and space. It’s an impressive achievement.
This is an ideal taster of McKenna’s work for those who haven’t read the “Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution” (Blood in the Water, Irons in the Fire, and Banners in the Wind) or the earlier “Tales of Einarrin”, and an additional treat from those that have read the full-length novels and hunger for more.
The book is set in the world of the “Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution”, at a slightly earlier point along the timeline, but you don’t need to have read the other books in the series to enjoy this one (although I would recommend them highly if you like smart, thoughtful fantasy with heart and punch.) Unusually for High Fantasy, the novella doesn’t focus on the deeds of Kings and mages, but centres on a conspiracy hatched by what George RR Martin would refer to as the “smallfolk”; a blacksmith’s apprentice, a priest, a heartbroken tavern maid, a lord’s mistress, a housewife and her son…
The story is passed from character to character with the smoothness of a relay baton as the conspiracy deepens. It is a conspiracy to bring about peace, to protect the sons of the smallfolk of Lescar from dying on the battlefield at the whim of their ducal masters. The multiple, switching points of view, which could have been overpowering in such a thin novel, are handled deftly and confidently, investing the reader in the fate of characters even after only spending a few pages with them. And the post-battle scenes, while poignant, do not shy away from gruesome detail. The reader also gets a real sense of depth, of the world stretching away beyond the narrow confines of these pages, both in time and space. It’s an impressive achievement.
This is an ideal taster of McKenna’s work for those who haven’t read the “Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution” (Blood in the Water, Irons in the Fire, and Banners in the Wind) or the earlier “Tales of Einarrin”, and an additional treat from those that have read the full-length novels and hunger for more.
September 16, 2012
Now I have to read the Lescari Revolution again. :)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews