In her best-selling The Last of the Renshai trilogy, Mickey Zucker Reichert breathed new life into ancient Norse legends, drawing readers into an age when both humankind and the gods hovered on the brink of destruction---the time just prior to Ragnarok, when the endless strife between the forces of Law and Chaos would clash in a final devastating confrontation, and the mortal world would be scoured clean of life by the fire giant's flame.
And what hope was there for mere humans when Odin, the leader of the gods, was himself doomed to die in the upcoming battle? Yet Odin had long planned to cheat his fate. His chosen weapon to slay his nemesis, Fenris Wolf, was the demigod Colbey Calistinsson, the son of Thor and the last true survivor of the warrior race known as the Renshai. But Colbey had loyalties far older and stronger than those he owed to the gods. He, too, was determined to change the foreordained path of the future---though Colbey's success would seal Odin's doom.
The Renshai's triumph was not, however, without its price, and now, nearly three hundred years after the time of Ragnarok, humankind was about to face a new and perhaps fatal trial. For though the balance between Law and Chaos had long been maintained by the rulers of Béarn, the current king was dying and a new keeper of neutrality must be found from among his heirs. Yet some unidentified enemy seemed bent on destroying all who stood in line to the throne. At the urging of his prime minister, King Kohleran was forced to make an unprecedented decision. Any with a claim to the throne, however distant, must take the Test of the Staves. None but those who had faced it knew what this ordeal was. All they were certain of was that the Staff of Law and the Staff of Chaos would together judge their right to rule. Those who did not prove worthy must live with this knowledge, and many a failed candidate had found death a welcome alternative. Still, with the very future of their world threatened should all the "true" heirs be slain, there seemed no other course to follow.
What the testing revealed, however, was the need to carry the search beyond the bounds of Béarn. And there, too, danger waited as the king's envoys disappeared with no trace. Deciding that desperate times called for desperate actions---and that older and supposedly wiser heads had not come up with a solution to Béarn's woes---a small band was formed in secret to seek out the last possible heir. But could the king's granddaughter, a knight in training, and apprentice bard, a young and untested Renshai warrior, and a thief who might as easily prove their betrayer as their friend survive the perils of the wild, and enemies equipped with magical powers in a world long bereft of spell casters? And even if any of them actually reached their goal, could they bring the one remaining untested heir back to Béarn alive?
(Extracted from the jacket.)
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