Snare
The Kazraks arrived eight hundred years ago from the Homelands, determined to found a pure society and live simple lives based on the teachings of the three prophets. But the despotic rule of the Great Khan leads a small band to take drastic action. Following information from Yarl Soutan, a mysterious sorcerer from the far away Cantons, Captain Idres Warkannan and his nephew Arkazo set off to find the Great Khan’s younger brother, Jezro, and bring him back to stage a coup. But first they must cross the purple grassy plains inhabited both by the peace-loving comnees, and by the terrifying ChaMeech, intelligent beasts who regularly raid their borders.
Meanwhile Zayn Hassan, a loyal member of the Chosen, the Great Khan’s deadly secret service, is well on his way to successfully infiltrating a comnee in order to cross the plains and the Great Rift safely. His mission is to follow Yarl Soutan and find out what he’s doing leading the devoutly religious Kazraks to the decadent Cantons. But he hasn’t bargained for the simple pleasure of life on the plains, or the attractions of Ammadin, the comnee’s fiercly independent spirit rider.
As both parties journey across the plains they come to realize that there is more at stake than their individual quests. Centuries-old falsehoods are gradually revealed as all the factions begin to see that their histories and identities are not what they thought they were.
Combining the dazzling invention of her SF with the gripping adventure of her bestselling Deverry series, Katharine Kerr has created a truly unique and thrilling literary fusion.
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Katharine Kerr
In the realm of epic fantasy, few names echo with the same fierce clarity as Katharine Kerr. Best known for her immersive Deverry Cycle, Kerr didn’t just create a world—she wove a tapestry of time, memory, and reincarnation that spanned centuries, yet remained achingly intimate. Her stories pulse with Celtic inspiration, layered timelines, and flawed, deeply human characters who evolve across lives and generations.
But Kerr’s journey to fantasy legend wasn’t charted from childhood. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she was more interested in jazz and science fiction than medieval swords and sorcery. It wasn’t until she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area—where myth and counterculture have long danced together—that her path bent toward high fantasy. A longtime fan of roleplaying games, she began designing complex worlds for tabletop campaigns before ever writing a novel. That attention to internal logic and continuity became a hallmark of her fiction. Unlike many traditional fantasy epics, the Deverry books don’t rely on prophecy or fate. They depend on choices—some noble, many terrible—and the way consequences echo through lifetimes.
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