The Darwath Series: The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight

Barbara Hambly

Sep 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

From a New York Times–bestselling author, three novels of a modern-day medievalist beset by murder and magic—“A fabulously talented writer” (Charlaine Harris).

As a student of medieval history, Gil Patterson is a woman familiar with dark stories. She knows the Crusades, the Black Death, and the other horrors of the Middle Ages all too well, but it is another kind of atrocity that has begun to haunt her dreams. She sees forces of evil assaulting a beleaguered kingdom, whose kind people are on the brink of annihilation, and awakes each morning in a cold sweat. In The Time of the Dark, Gil dismisses the dreams until a wizard appears in her apartment. He has crossed into her dimension, passing through the fraying fabric of the universe, to ask her help. For mankind to survive he must protect an infant prince, whom he plans to hide in Gil's world. She is about to get much closer to evil than she ever imagined. In The Walls of Air and The Armies of Daylight, Gil and Rudy know the world is no longer safe and there is nowhere to hide from the Dark. Since the Dark Ones returned, the world has been laid to waste. The land’s wizards have been slaughtered, its cities destroyed, and its people scattered in terror. Few have witnessed more of the destruction than Gil and Rudy, and both of them will need all their strength to survive this final challenge. Ingold, the master wizard, has devised a spell to hide the user from the deathly stare of the Dark, and he intends to use it to strike at their very heart. Finally, Gil, Rudy, and the rest of mankind’s survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.

Ratings and reviews

There are so many ideas & concepts in play that boredom has no chance to start. Equally, the creative use of many common ideas, some non-fictional in nature, leads the reader on a wondrous journey.

I felt very involved with these characters. Who hasn't felt, after reading a book like this, that they wished they could have the power of the wizard. No not power exactly, but, knowing that anything is possible in their world.

Syfy Fantasy...two "helpers" get caught in another universe where wizardry is reality

About the author

Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a New York Times–bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century. After receiving a master’s degree in medieval history, she published The Time of the Dark, the first novel in the Darwath saga, in 1982, establishing herself as an author of serious speculative fiction. Since then she has created several series, including the Windrose Chronicles, the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series, the Sun-Cross series, and her new fantasy novel, The Iron Princess, in addition to writing for the Star Wars and Star Trek universes.

Besides fantasy, Hambly has won acclaim for the James Asher vampire series, which won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989, and the Benjamin January mystery series, featuring a brilliant African-American surgeon in antebellum New Orleans. She lives in Los Angeles.