The Broken God

What do you do when the soul of your best friend breaks and he threatens to become not only your worst enemy but the destroyer of entire worlds?

In Book Two of David Zindell's epic science fiction series, The Neverness Cycle, a young man called Danlo the Wild stumbles out of a frozen wasteland into Neverness: the interstellar City of Light whose maze of streets of colored ice conceals dark secrets from the past as well as the brightest of hopes for the future. Starving, alone, frostbitten and grieving, a spear in his hand, Danlo is the sole survivor of his adoptive tribe, wiped out by a strange and hideous plague. He believes himself to be a misshaped member of the Alaloi people: the first settlers of the planet Icefall who long ago carked their DNA and their bodies into the form of Neanderthal cave-dwellers. Danlo, though, is fully human - and perhaps something more.

Seeking answers to the mysteries of his life, Danlo undergoes trials so that he can enter the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame: the ancient brotherhood and sisterhood of pilots, historians, akashics, cetics, and scryers who hold the Civilized Worlds together. At the Order's great Academy, he befriends Hanuman li Tosh, who has fled the oppression of the Cybernetic Universal Church. Long ago, as Danlo discovers, it was a sect of this church that engineered the virus that long ago killed billions in the War of the Faces - the very same virus that destroyed his tribe. He also discovers that the broken Hanuman dreams of engineering a future for the cosmos that will turn out to be vastly more deadly . . . .

The Broken God continues the saga of that began with Neverness. If you enjoy science fiction that explores different cultures, history, artificial life, evolution, and the nature of consciousness - along with a tragic story of a friendship gone wrong - you'll want to read this book. It will make hours and days disappear as you lose yourself in its pages. Buy it now.