Read The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini Online
Authors: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Tags: #01 Fantasy
The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini (55 page)
“Huurrhhh…”
The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.
“Huurhh… uurh…”
Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not dead? How could she not be dead?
Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.
“Uurh… uh… uh.”
Please, death.
Books by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Praise for the Novels of Jon Courtenay Grimwood
JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD
neoAddix
Lucifer’s Dragon
reMix
redRobe
Pashazade
Effendi
Felaheen
Stamping Butterflies
9tail Fox
End of the World Blues
The Fallen Blade
“Alternately violent and touching, exotic and strangely familiar.”
—
Washington Post
“All brilliant light and scorching heat… Grimwood has successfully mingled fantasy with reality to make an unusual, believable and absorbing mystery.”
—
Sunday Telegraph
(London)
“Grimwood’s imagination and the lively originality of his writing make this an intriguing enterprise…”
—
Chicago Tribune
“Disregard for the lines between genre is something we’ve come to expect of Grimwood, but even by his standards this is audacious—and brilliantly, seamlessly realized.”
—
SFX
“Grimwood’s hard-boiled prose reels you in like a velvet rope.”
—
Entertainment Weekly
“Ambitious, deft and accomplished… confirms Grimwood’s place amongst the very best of contemporary SF authors.”
—Iain M. Banks
“Grimwood imbues his creations with startling psychological complexity…”
—
The Guardian
(UK)
“Jon Courtenay Grimwood has emerged over the last few years as one of the more interesting newer British novelists… No one else is doing anything like it—or even trying to. Grimwood actually seems to have been in the places he makes up.”
—
Locus
“Grimwood packs every sentence with so much meaning that you’ll want to go back… dazzling, seductive and pointed.”
—
The Independent
(UK)
“Raymond Chandler for the 21st century…”
—
Esquire
“Dazzling panache and an acute satirical eye…”
—
The Times
(London)
“William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino.”
—
New Woman
Copyright © 2011 by JonCGLimited
Excerpt from
Best Served Cold
copyright © 2009 by Joe Abercrombie Limited
Map by Flying Fish
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Orbit
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First eBook Edition: January 2011
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12339-6
