Ornth

Ornth is the first of three books dealing with the following questions: <ul> <li>Can consciousness be moved from one person to another? <li>What is the essential nature of civilization? <li>Do people naturally wish to be free or secretly yearn to be enslaved? <li>Is Clarke's Third Law true? <li>Could distinct intelligent species inhabit the same territory for more than a few generations without one wiping out the others? </ul> Jodos is a warlord torn between completing his father's dream of conquest and finding his own path. Dinya is a renegade from a remote but powerful people who once ruled the world. Elmark is the last survivor of a tribe that stumbled across ancient magic, only to have it be their death. Their paths intersect and force them to come together to locate and control the Ornth, a device that Dinya's people built and intend to use to restore their place as the dominant race of Ani -- "the people" -- in Mermarkiddin.