Publisher HarperCollins has released the cover and synopsis of Stephen Hunt‘s third novel, The Rise of the Iron Moon, which is a sequel to The Kingdom Beyond the Waves and his first novel, The Court of the Air. The mass market paperback re-release of Waves, the second volume in his Jackelian world sequence, and Moon recently has their publication dates moved up. Waves came out at the beginning of the month, and Moon will appear in February 2009. HarperCollins Voyager is publishing the books in the UK, Canada, and Australia, and Tor will publish them in the US. Additionally, the books are being translated into French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
The new book features “the invasion of the Kingdom by an enemy that everyone at first mistakes for a particularly successful horde of polar barbarians… the Army of Shadows. To their ever-lasting regret, the peace-loving Jackelian people soon find that their terrible foe is far more dangerous, cunning, and ancient than a mere nomad incursion. To defeat them, the Kingdom and their steammen allies must look beyond their borders and make common cause with the wicked republic of the Commonshare, but even the armies of all three nations combined might not be enough to defeat this new evil.” This third volume features the return of Molly, Oliver, Commodore Black, and the steamman scientist Coppertracks.
Hunt said of the books “This is the third of six adventure books set in my Jackelian world, and like the previous two, it’s a stand-alone novel with a self-contained plot, albeit with some very familiar faces making their return. It was incredibly great fun to write, and it answers some of the questions and mysteries that many fans of the first two works have been writing to me about.”
The cover copy will ask “How can one plucky orphan girl save the world from destruction? Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, lonely orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her mysterious rescuer claims to have escaped from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals, just as they conquered his own nation. Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals’ neighbours of the murderous Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweeping all before them.
“But there’s more to Purity Drake than meets the eye. And as Jackals girds itself for war against an army of near-indestructible beasts serving an ancient evil with a terrible secret, it soon becomes clear that the Kingdom’s only hope is a strange little orphan girl and the last, desperate plan of an escaped slave from a land, far, far away…”