A brilliant story of adventure, wit and philosophy from the origins of the SPELLSLINGER series to enrapture devotees as well as newcomers alike.
New to the ways of the Argosi, the tribe of wandering philosophers who seek to defeat evil by wit and guile, Ferius Parfax encounters a hideous plague - the Red Scream. Highly contagious, caught by the hearing of a deadly verse, it turns its victims into mindless monsters that destroy all human life they come into contact with. With the help of a deaf boy whom she has saved from two horrifying victims of the plague, she sets out to find the source of the Red Scream and overcome it's terrifying power. Along the way she is joined by another Argosi, Rosie, who purports to be so much wiser and more adept than Ferius, but who turns out to have her own dark secrets.
Peopled with extraordinary characters and gut-wrenching drama, Ferius's story teaches her hard lessons about the limits of the Argosi's ways. Readers will delight not just in this amazing masterclass in plot pacing and narrative drive, but in the seemingly bottomless well of wit, thought and wisdom that the story brings up and that has changed lives down the ages. It takes the reader on a journey like no other.

Sebastien de Castell had just finished a degree in Archaeology when he started work on his first dig. Four hours later he realised how much he actually hated archaeology and left to pursue a very focused career as a musician, ombudsman, interaction designer, fight choreographer, teacher, project manager, actor and product strategist. His only defence against the charge of unbridled dilettantism is that he genuinely likes doing these things and that, in one way or another, each of these fields plays a role in his writing. He sternly resists the accusation of being a Renaissance Man in the hopes that more people will label him that way.
Sebastien lives in Vancouver with his lovely wife and two belligerent cats. Follow Sebastien at www.decastell.com or on Twitter: @decastell