Synopses & Reviews
John C. Wright burst onto the SF scene with the Golden Age trilogy. His next project was the ambitious fantasy sequence,
The Last Guardians of Everness.Wrights 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.
Review
Praise for The Last Guardian of Everness "At times it feels like an arch collaboration between Samuel Beckett (for comic Godot despair) and Gilbert & Sullivan (pirate silliness), working with Lewis Carroll and J. M. Barrie . . . Yet Wright can approach the true uncanny unease, fearful ugliness, and lucent beauty of dream. Then the tale . . . wings forward with inventive impulse, genuinely captivating, a little reminiscent of Orson Scott Card's strangely successful reworking of Russian folklore, Enchantment. . . . [it] is by turns ingenious, absurd, disturbing, elevated, and even moving."
-Locus
"Already regarded as one of the best science fiction writers of the last decade for his stirring Golden Age trilogy, John C. Wright proves he has the right stuff to write exciting modern day epic fantasy with the terrific The Last Guardian of Everness."
-Midwest Book Review
"The author of The Golden Age begins a new series set in the world of today but tinged with the world of fairy and myth. For most fantasy collections."
-Library Journal
"Fans of John C. Wright's SF trilogy will welcome his thought-provoking fantasy debut."
-Publishers Weekly
Praise for The Golden Transcendence
"Concluding the extraordinary far-future space opera begun with The Golden Age (2002) and continued with The Phoenix Exultant . . . [The Golden Transcendence is] set forth with such effortless intelligence and confident verisimilitude that the author might be a denizen of the remote future, reporting back to us in the distant past."
-Kirkus Reviews
"John C. Wright sends his hero on a brilliant and surreally glittering voyage like a Sinbad of the distant future."
-Phyllis Gotlieb
"A mind-bending Technicolor tale straying into future myth with bags of sensawunda, and no shortage of the weird."
-Neal Asher
Praise for The Phoenix Exultant
"This is as epic a saga as you're likely to get . . . realized here with an attention to detail and plausibility that set it in a class of its own."
--SFRevu
"John Wright is a stunning new talent. His vivid worlds are filled with wonder and dread, tension and hope."
--David Brin, author of Kiln People
"Wright's extraordinary far-future space opera continues. . . . Witty, inventive, labyrinthine, with a life-sized cast, Wright's creation - something like Alexander Jablokov meets Charles Sheffield, with a dash of Gene Wolfe - grows steadily more addictive."
-Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Praise for The Golden Age
"Bursting with kaleidoscopic imagery, Wright's first novel chronicles the quest of a far-future everyman in his journey of self-discovery. Reminiscent of the panoramic novels of Arthur C. Clarke, Iain Banks, and Jack Vance, this allegorical space opera belongs in most SF collections."
-Library Journal
"Dazzling . . . Wright may be this fledgling century's most important new SF talent."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
"Wright's myth-infused fantasy looks like something older Harry Potter fans might enjoy with its creaky British boarding school setting and its five ageless orphans--Colin, Quentin, Victor, Vanity, and Amelia each with a supernatural gift." -
Publishers Weekly on
Orphans of Chaos "Wright's
Orphans of Chaos is a stylish roller-coaster ride through the best loops and swerves of science fiction and fantasy. Zelazny lovers in particular ought to love this book as much as I did." -Sherwood Smith
"A bit like C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia updated by half a century, but with more gusto." -Locus on Orphans of Chaos "I don't know if John Wright's intent for Orphans of Chaos was to write a Harry Potter for grownups. But that's what he's accomplished. . . .highly enjoyable." --SFsite
"An exciting, unusual, and very satisfying ride through the author's imagination, and the results are certainly going to make Wright even more of a hot property." --Chronicle on Orphans of Chaos
"Start of a complex mythology-based series from the author of the astonishing far-future Golden Age trilogy . . . . Fascinatingly, dazzlingly...erudite fantasy that trends inexorably toward science fiction; addicts will pounce." -Kirkus, starred review on Orphans of Chaos
Review
"Wright's myth-infused fantasy looks like something older Harry Potter fans might enjoy."
Publishers Weekly
Review
"A bit like C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia updated by half a century, but with more gusto."
Locus
Review
"Wright's Orphans of Chaos is a stylish roller-coaster ride through the best loops and swerves of science fiction and fantasy."
Sherwood Smith
Review
"An exciting, unusual, and very satisfying ride through the author's imagination."
Chronicle
Review
"Fascinatingly, dazzlingly...erudite fantasy."
Kirkus, starred review
Synopsis
What if your teachers taught you everything-except who you really are?
For Amelia and her friends, the strict English boarding school she lives in is all she has ever known. The sprawling estate, bordered by unknown territory on all four sides, is both orphanage, academy, and prison. The school has a large staff, but only five students, none of whom know what their real names are, or even how old they are.
Precocious and rebellious, all five teenagers are more than just prodigies. Amelia can see in four dimensions. Victor can control the molecular arrangement of matter. Vanity can find secret passageways where none existed before. Colin is a psychic. Quentin is a warlock.
And, as time goes by, they're starting to suspect that none of them are entirely human . . .
John C. Wright previous fantasy novels, the Epic Chronicles of Everness, were lavishly praised by both readers and reviewers. Now he embarks on an ambitious new saga that explores the overlapping boundaries of science, mythology, and the imagination.
About the Author
JOHN C. WRIGHT, an attorney turned SF and fantasy writer, has published short fiction in Asimovs SF and elsewhere. This is his second fantasy novel, after The Last Guardian of Everness and the SF trilogy, The Golden Age.