Dead Ground

...this tale of demonic transgressions and heroism possesses enough H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson verve and verisimilitude to capture your imagination. -- Paul di Filippo, Asimov's Amies has tapped a seldom-used mythological vein as the basis for his novel, and as a result has created something quite distinctive...-- Tim Pratt, Locus In style the book is an adventure rather than a horrorfest, one whose work setting and style is reminiscent of the works of Rider Haggard. -- Kathy Taylor, Vector There's an effective sense of place, with an interesting pantheon of Polynesian gods whose conflicts are echoed on Earth...-- David Langford, SFX This is a pacey, well-written novel with a commendable lack of padding. -- Liz Williams, Interzone Dead Ground is the terrain you can't see. It's marked that way on a map because the mapmakers couldn't see into it. Dead Ground is the ghost space inside our heads. The bit where the monsters are real. The Condals are the smallest of the Pacific island groups, a few hundred miles south of the sea lanes; the back end of the British Empire. Now an archaeological expedition is here to open a mysterious structure sacred to Taharoa, the Sea God of the islanders. Even before they begin, people start dying. Museum conservator Allan Delmar discovers the writings of a reclusive former schoolmaster which speak of terrible things that happened in the islands centuries ago, and which he says will happen again. Only the long-awaited hero Roho will save the islands. But who is Roho? Sun, sea, palm trees and a modern feel of imperial exhaustion and decline which merges seamlessly into the much darker forces at work.