Fugitives
of Chaos Fugitives
of Chaos Click
here to order it from Amazon.com!
ISBN# 0765314967
Published November 2006 as a hardback
by Tor books.
Click on the cover to see a close up
(Is it my imagination, or does Amelia Windrose look like Elke Sommer?)
Wright follows in the footsteps of Neil Gaiman and Tim Powers with his own distinctive style...A highly enjoyable ride.
Five orphans attending a British boarding school gradually realize that they are something other than human. Each one possesses special powers (some are science-based, while others are paranormal and magical in nature) that should not coexist in the same universe. Who they are and why they have come together is the mystery the orphans must solve in order to find their true homes. Wright (The Last Guardian of Everness) has written a modern-day fantasy that borrows from many traditions and mythologies and has the feel of an epic. A solid selection for most libraries.
Part two of Wright's mythology-based trilogy (Orphans of Chaos, 2005) wherein five children of extraordinary lineage, each perhaps from a different universe, have been snatched from their families and raised in strict confinement in an archetypical British boarding school. [...] At the end of the previous volume, the children were recaptured after an escape attempt, their memories wiped, their powers stripped away-all except for Amelia, who must somehow enlighten the others despite knowing that their every word and deed is known to Headmaster Boggin. In a safe at the school resides a set of objects that might help them release their powers-a necklace, a book, a potion, an orb, a card-if they can find a way to break in. Even if they succeed, they must escape again, this time permanently, or be killed. And they must still discover why they've been treated thus, and determine whether they are pawns or queens in a dreadful struggle between the forces of Cosmos and Chaos.
Further mind-boggling complications, this time leavened with humor, weighing in somewhere between splendid and abstruse: Stay tuned for the conclusion, Titans.
Wright's new fantasy is a tale about five orphans raised in a strict
British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human
beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around
them does.
The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia
is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who
can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can
find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously
been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from
a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should
not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that
they can?
The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their
powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings no more human than they
are: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things
even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn
to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors.