Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris - Softcover

Rice, Anne; Rice, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1101970332 ISBN 13: 9781101970331

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

The gilded adventures of Ramses the Damned, iconic creation of the legendary bestselling author, continue in this breathtakingly suspenseful tale of a titanic supernatural power unleashed on the eve of war.

A pharaoh made immortal by a mysterious and powerful elixir, Ramses the Great became counselor and lover to some of Egypt's greatest and most powerful rulers before he was awakened from centuries of slumber to the mystifying and dazzling world of Edwardian England. Having vanquished foes both human and supernatural, he's found love with the beautiful heiress Julie Stratford, daughter of Lawrence Stratford, the slain archeologist who discovered his tomb. Now, with the outbreak of a world war looming, Ramses and those immortals brought forth from the mists of history by his resurrection will face their greatest test yet.
 
Russian assassins bearing weapons of immense power have assembled under one command: all those who loved Lawrence Stratford must die. From the glowing jewels at their necks comes an incredible supernatural force: the power to bring statues to life. As Ramses and his allies, including the immortal queens Cleopatra and Bektaten, gather together to battle these threats, Ramses reveals that the great weapon may have roots in an ancient Egyptian ritual designed to render pharaohs humble before Osiris, the god of the underworld. The resulting journey will take them across storm-tossed seas and into the forests of northern Russia, where they will confront a terrifying collision of tortured political ambitions and religious fervor held in thrall to a Godlike power. But the true answers they seek will lie beyond the border between life and death, within realms that defy the imagination of even an immortal such as Ramses the Great.
 
In Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, Anne Rice, revered and beloved storyteller ("queen of gothic lit, the maestro of the monstrous and the diva of the devious" --The Philadelphia Inquirer), in collaboration with her son, acclaimed bestselling novelist Christopher Rice ("a magician; a master" --Peter Straub), bring us another thrilling, seductive tale of high adventure, romance, history, and suspense.
 
AN ANCHOR ORIGINAL

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ANNE RICE is the author of thirty-seven books. She died in 2021. CHRISTOPHER RICE published four New York Times bestselling novels before the age of thirty and has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Together with his best friend and producing partner, New York Times bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, he runs the podcast and video network, The Dinner Party Show.

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The gilded adventures of Ramses the Damned, iconic creation of the legendary bestselling author, continue in this breathtakingly suspenseful tale of a titanic supernatural power unleashed on the eve of war.

A pharaoh made immortal by a mysterious and powerful elixir, Ramses the Great became counselor and lover to some of Egypt's greatest and most powerful rulers before he was awakened from centuries of slumber to the mystifying and dazzling world of Edwardian England. Having vanquished foes both human and supernatural, he's found love with the beautiful heiress Julie Stratford, daughter of Lawrence Stratford, the slain archeologist who discovered his tomb. Now, with the outbreak of a world war looming, Ramses and those immortals brought forth from the mists of history by his resurrection will face their greatest test yet.

Russian assassins bearing weapons of immense power have assembled under one command: all those who loved Lawrence Stratford must die. From the glowing jewels at their necks comes an incredible supernatural force: the power to bring statues to life. As Ramses and his allies, including the immortal queens Cleopatra and Bektaten, gather together to battle these threats, Ramses reveals that the great weapon may have roots in an ancient Egyptian ritual designed to render pharaohs humble before Osiris, the god of the underworld. The resulting journey will take them across storm-tossed seas and into the forests of northern Russia, where they will confront a terrifying collision of tortured political ambitions and religious fervor held in thrall to a Godlike power. But the true answers they seek will lie beyond the border between life and death, within realms that defy the imagination of even an immortal such as Ramses the Great.

In Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris, Anne Rice, revered and beloved storyteller ("queen of gothic lit, the maestro of the monstrous and the diva of the devious" --The Philadelphia Inquirer), in collaboration with her son, acclaimed bestselling novelist Christopher Rice ("a magician; a master" --Peter Straub), bring us another thrilling, seductive tale of high adventure, romance, history, and suspense.

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1

Brogdon Castle

She was no stranger to war.

She had walked the fields of many plagues through the centuries, offered healing and comfort to the mortals who lay dying there.

She had borne witness to the fall of kingdoms, knew well the tastes and scents and sounds that split the air before a world was shattered by an apocalyptic storm.

Bektaten felt those things now. They rode the brisk, ocean winds that swept her long walks atop the sea-facing cliffs. They drummed against the stone walls of the Norman castle she had so recently restored. They rose high above the English Channel, spun off by the thunderheads rolling over the German Empire.

War was coming.

But the reports from her spies throughout the world, her beloved Heralds of the Realms, had convinced her this cataclysm would have no precedent in history, and so her eight thousand years of immortal life could not prepare her for it. Cannons that could turn a battalion of soldiers to a sea of charnel would soon be rolled into battle. Machinery that once defied imaginations would service an interlocking web of conflict unlike any she’d ever seen. All the great nations of Europe would soon be embroiled.

She could feel the coming thunder of it in her unbreakable bones.

And so she retired to her library with its leather-bound volumes containing her ancient journals, where the great mastiffs she had recently rescued watched her attentively from all corners of the stone-walled room. Outside, the Celtic Sea roared against the bases of the cliffs on which her castle stood, but within her citadel she could hear only the drumbeat of war. She lifted her pen to paper and she wrote. She wrote to all the immortals who had so recently been placed under her care. Immortals who’d been rendered so without her consent, but through the power of an elixir she had created thousands of years before.

She wrote to them of the war she feared and the temptations it would place before them all. When she was through, her loyal servants, Enamon and Aktamu, would make all the necessary copies of the letter and see that it was delivered to all of the recipients addressed therein. To Ramses the Great, once Ramses the Damned, and his immortal lover, Julie Stratford. To the dashing and mysterious Elliott Savarell, who she’d yet to meet. And to the American novelist Sibyl Parker and the immortal to whom she was still mysteriously connected, a woman who may well be the risen Cleopatra herself. She wrote to this Cleopatra as well, sweeping aside the question of whether or not she was truly Egypt’s last queen reborn, or a fragmented clone residing within her resurrected skin and bones.

Essential to address them all as one, as if they sat collectively before her. For how else to impress upon them that they were an alliance, a council in the making. The first citizens of a new kingdom that must endure within the shadows and gaps of knowledge that defined mortal humanity.

With each stroke of the pen, she tried to summon her wisdom and her experience, hoping it would form a river of strength through the fear that dominated her thoughts.

She knew it essential to write them, not just as their queen, but as their compatriot, and so she began by opening her ancient heart.

You are my children now, all of you, and given the extent of all that I must protect here at my citadel atop the windswept cliffs of Cornwall, you are my subjects too. And so I share these words with confidence that you will each place flame to paper once you have absorbed the contents of this letter so as to conceal from history the many secrets alluded to within these pages.

The events which drew us all unexpectedly together have reached their conclusion. Saqnos, the prime minister of my ancient kingdom, who for thousands of years strived to steal from me the formula for the pure elixir, has been vanquished, along with his acolytes, the fracti.

I grieve Saqnos. I cannot be untruthful about this. He was once my lover and prime minister before he turned traitor, before he was lost to his rage over the fact that I had kept my discovery of the secret to eternal life from him. But he was one of but a handful of witnesses to the glory and expanse of Shaktanu, our fallen kingdom, our ancient world. With him died memories of glittering palaces now ground to dust by time, great sailing ships lost to the winds of history, of a forgotten time when the Sahara, now desert, was dappled with crystalline pools and glistening rivers and trees that shifted lazily in temperate winds. These were the gardens of a kingdom that was spoken of by the ancient world, as Atlantis is now spoken of by this modern one.

But the destruction of Saqnos is but a prologue to what I wish to share in this letter. For his vile plots have brought us all together, and now that we are roughly and newly united, our new burdens commence.

Given the power you all possess, I must speak to you now of the terrible war I believe to be on the wing.

2

London

They were kind men, these officials from the British Museum. But their presence here in her front parlor stirred painful memories of other agents of that august institution who had tried to force their way into Julie’s home months before, all in a frenzied effort to make off with Lawrence Stratford’s last, great discovery—the ancient mummy and artifacts her father had unearthed in the hills outside Cairo just before his murder.

Of course, those men hadn’t possessed the slightest idea of the true magic and mystery contained within her father’s finds. They’d financed the expedition and felt entitled to its end results. And they’d thought it terribly ghastly Julie had insisted on displaying the mummy right here in the front parlor of her family home in Mayfair. And like the world, they’d no idea of the miracle that followed. A miracle wrought by ancient magic and the sun, the very kind of fierce, midday sunlight that filtered through the stained-glass ceiling of the conservatory now, illuminating the empty shelves that had been filled with her father’s journals only moments before.

But these were different men standing before her in this moment, gentler men. And she’d invited them here. They’d not come to collect an ancient mummy and its related artifacts, for the occupant of that sarcophagus had, to the eyes of London, mysteriously disappeared. No, these men had come for something far more intimate and personal.

Lawrence Stratford’s journals.

“I must say, Miss Stratford, we’re most impressed you were able to make a survey of this many volumes so quickly. Especially given recent events.” Eyebrow raised, the shorter of the two men studied her.

Ah, there it was again. They were beset by curiosity about the mysterious tale of her betrothal party to an Egyptologist named Mr. Reginald Ramsey. To say nothing of the earlier scandals that had marked Mr. Ramsey’s rather mysterious and sudden arrival into London society.

“My father’s legacy had been marked by much excitement, that’s for sure,” she said. “But I didn’t read the journals just these past few days. I’d spent much time with them already, so it was short work, removing the ones too personal. Surely you can understand that some of Lawrence’s innermost thoughts must not be . . .”

“Oh, of course. Of course, Ms. Stratford.”

Both men practically fell all over themselves to agree.

She felt a stab of guilt. Part of what she’d just said was a lie. But hardly a damnable one. In fact, she’d read the entirety of his journals—thirty-five volumes from a lifetime of expeditions to Egypt—in a single day’s time. And...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1101970332
• ISBN 13: 9781101970331
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Anja's; service@anja-karge.de; ; Von-Gumppenberg-Str. 94; Pöttmes; 86554; Deutschland