Fantasy Masterwork of the Week: Ombria in Shadow

Our latest Fantasy Masterwork of the Week won the World Fantasy Award for best novel in 2002 – the second win for its author, the highly-acclaimed Patricia A. McKillip: Ombria in Shadow.

The Prince of Ombria is dying, and already his sinister great-aunt is plotting to seize power. The Black Pearl is feared throughout the land, and the city folk know her reign will be a terrible one. Only the prince’s son can stop her from seizing the throne but he’s just a boy – barely worth the trouble of doing away with.

Ombria, it seems, is doomed. And yet, beneath the streets, in a buried world of shadows and ghosts, a mysterious sorceress is weaving new spells, watched over by a girl sculpted entirely from wax . . .

‘A swift, dark dream of a book . . . masterfully turning old fairy tales on their heads’ ~ Locus

‘There are no better writers than Patricia A. McKillip’ ~ Stephen R. Donaldson

Ombria in Shadow is available as a Fantasy Masterworks paperback and an SF Gateway eBook. More of Patricia A. McKillip’s work will soon be available via her Author page on the SF Gateway website, and you can read about her in her entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.