Tales of Henghis Hapthorn

Sherlock Holmes meets Jack Vance’s Dying Earth in Majestrum, the explosive new novel from Matthew Hughes, acclaimed author of Black Brillion, Fools Errant, and The Gist Hunter and Other Stories.

The scientific method and a well-calibrated mind have long served freelance discriminator Henghis Hapthorn, allowing him to investigate and solve the problems of the wealthy and powerful aristocracy of Old Earth, and securing him a reputation for brilliance across The Spray and throughout the Ten Thousand Worlds. But the universe is shifting, cycling away from logic and reason and ushering in a new age of sympathetic association, better known as magic.

This change is evidenced by the unexplained transformation of Henghis Hapthorn’s personal electronic integrator into a small fruit-eating creature. Odder still, Hapthorn’s personality has been cleaved into two distinct beings sharing one body: himself, familiar and appropriate to the rational old order; and the other, strange, intuitive, and obsessed with an arcane and untranslated tome, appropriate to the new.

When Hapthorn is hired by Lord Afre to investigate the motives of his daughter’s new companion, a young man of indeterminate circumstances, he takes the job expecting it to allow him the opportunity to explore and understand his changing universe. Little does Henghis Hapthorn realize, but the path of discovery will lead to deeper questions, a mysterious assignment from the Archon himself, and the ancient and powerful secret name... Majestrum!