Ghost Dance
Book 3 of The Ghost World Sequence
"Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?"
The young witch, Shingebiss, believes she can 'spell' the Czar and make him save her beloved Northlands from destruction.
In her innocence, she little understands that the Imperial Palace is a place of treachery and murder, ruled by a madman with a mind like 'a broken mirror, reflecting all things crookedly.'
At first the Czar takes Shingebiss for an angel, sent to him by God, and welcomes her. But none of her spells seem able to blunt his greed and cruelty.
Shingebiss has a rival at court who hates her -- the English wizard, Master Jenkins, who pretends to the Czar that he can summon demons.
Fearing that Shingebiss will unmask him, Master Jenkins plans to be rid of her. He tells the Czar that he can make him an Elixir of Immortality. The most potent ingredient is the blood of an angel.
The Czar orders the elixir made immediately.
Can Shingebiss save the Northlands?
Can she save her own life?
An intense, Gothic fantasy
REVIEWS
In Ghost Dance, Price transports us to the palace of a Czar whose avarice and suspicion are destroying the beautiful Northlands... Here again, the complete seriousness and integrity of the writing makes for a quietly terrifying read. Highly recommended.
Guinevere Vaughan
This third book of the sequence is still rich and deeply powerful. It's full of the physical awfulness of human existence and human fears and the magic of storytelling which veers between the safe and the dangerous, the fascinating and the uncomfortable.
Books For Keeps
Susan Price is an acclaimed author of over 60 books, which have been translated into many languages, including Japanese, Chinese and Russian. She has written for almost every age-group, and has won several awards, including the Carnegie and the Guardian, and has been short-listed for the Whitbread.
She is a founder member of the Authors Electric Collective (Find them on-line.)
To find out more about her books, visit her website at https://www.susanpriceauthor.com/