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    The Queen's Adept
    The Queen's Adept
    The Queen's Adept
    Ebook494 pages7 hours

    The Queen's Adept

    By Rodolfo Martínez

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    The People's Covenant and God's Hammer have raged a Cold War that has lasted for over twenty years. A war without armies, where battles are fought in the dark and information is the most dangerous weapon.

    In this world —which sometimes seems the Middle Ages, sometimes the Renaissance and sometimes the Nineteenth Century— lives Yáxtor Brandan, empirical adept at the service of the Queen of Alboné. A relentless, amoral and unscrupulous character, Yáxtor fights to recover his own past as he tries to prevent a new player in the espionage game to end the world, as he knows it.

    A fascinating fast-moving and complex plot, full of tension and surprises and excellently paced; a main character for whom it should be impossible to feel the slightest sympathy, and yet somehow we do, even as his cruelty disturbs us more and more -an extremely difficult feat to pull off so successfully; powerful secondary actors, who either leave you with a sense of uneasiness with regard to their motivations and loyalties, or make you want to shout out -as people did in the early days of cinema- "Look out, don't trust him!"; and a pervading atmosphere of tragedy, especially in a final unexpected and shocking, yet on reflection almost inevitable, scene. In short, a totally addictive and highly original novel set in a world that is at once both strangely familiar and disturbingly alien.
    —Steve Redwood, author of Fisher of Devils.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSportula Ediciones
    Release dateApr 1, 2015
    ISBN9788493920388
    The Queen's Adept
    Author

    Rodolfo Martínez

    Rodolfo Martínez (Candás, Asturias, 1965) publica su primer relato en 1987 y no tarda en convertirse en uno de los autores indispensables de la literatura fantástica española, aunque si una característica define su obra es la del mestizaje de géneros, mezclando con engañosa sencillez y sin ningún rubor numerosos registros, desde la ciencia ficción y la fantasía hasta la novela negra y el thriller, consiguiendo que sus obras sean difícilmente encasillables.Ganador del premio Minotauro (otorgado por la editorial Planeta) por «Los sicarios del cielo», ha cosechado numerosos galardones a lo largo de su carrera literaria, como el Asturias de Novela, el UPV de relato fantástico y, en varias ocasiones, el Ignotus (en sus categorías de novela, novela corta y cuento).Su obra holmesiana, compuesta hasta el momento de cuatro libros, ha sido traducida al portugués, al polaco, al turco y al francés y varios de sus relatos han aparecido en publicaciones francesas.En 2009 y con «El adepto de la Reina», inició un nuevo ciclo narrativo en el que conviven elementos de la novela de espías de acción con algunos de los temas y escenarios más característicos de la fantasía.Recientemente ha empezado a recopilar su ciclo narrativo de Drímar en cuatro volúmenes, todos ellos publicados por Sportula.

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    3/5

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    • 3/5
      I am only giving this 3 stars because I think something was lost in the translation from the original Spanish, but this story stays with you in a vague, disturbing way. Part spy novel, part thriller, with lots of alien worldbuilding that is both familiar, and unreal. The main character is utterly despiccable and unsympathetic, and yet you are drawn to him, rooting for him to complete his mission, even as you ask yourself why. Although the protagonist uses invisible parasites called 'messengers' to meld people to his will, what Martinez has done is lead his reader down into the mind of a remorseless psychopath, and the women (and men) who seem helpless to do anything but fall under his spell, and made him real.The first four chapters were rather slow and hard to grasp. Like Tolkein, if you slog through the first four chapters, the story is well worth the reading. If you happen to read Spanish, I suggest you read this story in the original langauge as the translation caused a subtle barrier to appear between author and reader at times that I'm certain doesn't exist in the original. I would say this story rises above the level of mere science fiction/fantasy to the level of literary fiction, so subtle and insidious is the web Martinez weaves. I think I am like the character Yosinda ... I hate that I liked it.

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    The Queen's Adept - Rodolfo Martínez

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