A mysterious pyramid appears in Chicago, oozing fantastic creatures and sucking humans into our own mythological past. It's an alien invasion from within!
When a special forces team sent to capture an AWOL official gets into deep trouble with a certain one-eyed Norse god, redoubtable comparative mythologist Jerry Lukacs must rescue them, strike a deal with the droll and dangerous Loki, and risk bringing on Ragnarok itself to once again save human myth from alien domination.
The rollicking sequel to New York Times best-seller Eric Flint and David Freers's action-packed romp through everything humankind holds sacred begun in the groundbreaking Pyramid Scheme.
"[A] charmingly picaresque journey." —Publishers Weekly on Flint and Freers's Pyramid Scheme.
Miles, Mutants and Microbes
Miles Among Mutants
So what if he's a squat, malformed, weak-boned royal outcast Miles Vorkosigan's hyperactive intellect and relentless drive wins through time and again to save the day for the Empire that rejected him. PLUS: You are the perfect spacer—engineered for freefall in body, mind and soul. But now the work's done and you're slated to be genocidally wiped from existence. Are you human enough to resist Hell, yeah!
Here in one masterly volume set in the "Vorkosigan" universe: the science fiction classic and Nebula-award-winning Falling Free, plus two Miles Vorkosigan tales of derring-do, droll wit, and dynamic world-building spun by the multiple Hugo- and Nebula-winning Doyenne of Modern Space Opera, Lois McMaster Bujold!
And no dealing with them either. Or even their planet. Pity the poor aliens, whose shape-changing ability should let them take over the planet Earth before the humans even know they're there-if it weren't for all that omnipresent pollution.
Or consider another set of invaders, from a planet where the weather is always mild and the changing of the seasons is hardly noticeable. They land in force and their weapons are more powerful than those of the primitive humans-but they've never before had to deal with below-zero temperatures, flash floods or tornados-not to mention volcanoes.
Then there were the aliens who noticed how belligerent humans were, and gave them the "gift" of TV-like devices which would show anything anywhere on Earth, which was sure to lead to war. Imagine how surprised the aliens were when the humans took the gadgets apart, improved them, and started spying on everything the aliens were up to, all over the galaxy. Humans don't make sense, they don't fight fair, and they're making aliens throughout interstellar space think seriously about pulling up stakes and moving to another galaxy!
Zhikotse. Shallingsport. Louvain. Sacred fields of battle on far-flung worlds where warriors of the Imperial Cadre spent blood and lives defending human civilization. Alicia DeVries was there; she led the charge. Her reward Betrayal by a deceitful empire. Retirement to obscurity.
Now Alicia is the only survivor of a brutal attack on her frontier-world family. Not since the mighty Achilles has the ancient spirit of the Fury Tisiphone taken up residence inside a human being. But not since Achilles has a warrior so skilled, so implacable, and possessing so much battle sense sprung up among the mass of humankind. Hero of the Empire. Holder of the Banner of Terra.
There is a blood price to be paid. The Fury has awakened.
An elite warrior in a line stretching to the U.S. Marines of old Earth is born and comes into her power in a mega-novel of heroism and adventure by multiple New York Times best-seller David Weber, creator of the Honor Harrington saga!
Praise for David Weber
"[P]acks enough punch to blast a starship to smithereens." —Publishers Weekly on David Weber's mega-selling "Honorverse" series.
"Weber's descriptions of space combat remain magnificent." —Sci-Fi Weekly
Jason Thanou of the Temporal Regulatory Authority had about had it with nursemaiding parties of ivory-tower academics through Earth's blood-drenched history, keeping them alive as they sought evidence for their pet theories. Of course, when one of the ivory-tower academics looked like Doctor Deirdre Sadaka-Ramirez, one last expedition didn't look like such a bad idea after all.. . .
Besides, there was something to be said for witnessing the Santorini explosion of 1628 B.C.—the most cataclysmic natural disaster of human history, and the source of much of the mythology of Jason's own Greek ancestors. But once Jason and his companions were in the Aegean Bronze Age, unable to return to their own twenty-fourth-century time until a predetermined instant, they would find that there was more to those old legends of gods and heroes than anyone had imagined. For the gods were very real—horribly so. And dealing with them took very real heroes.
At least that's what Miles Vorkosigan thinks and he should know, having done both once already. That was when he last visited the planet of Jackson's Whole, while rescuing his brother. Thanks to quick thinking on the part of his staff, and incredible artistry on the part of the specialist who revived him, his first death won't be his last. But his next one might be, a realization he finds profoundly unsettling.
Even after he returns to military duty, his late death seems to be having a greater effect than he's willing to admit. Unfortunately, his weakness reveals itself to the world at large at just the wrong time and in just the wrong way, and Miles is summoned home to face Barrayaran security chief Simon Illyan. But when things begin to go subtly wrong in Imperial Security itself, "Who shall guard the guardians " becomes a more-than-rhetorical question, with a potentially lethal answer.
Things look bad, but they are far worse than Miles imagines, as he discovers his worst nightmares about Simon Illyan don't compare to Illyan's worst nightmares—or are they memories
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lois McMaster Bujold burst upon the SF world in 1986 with the first of the Vorkosigan Saga novels, Shards of Honor, closely followed by The Warrior's Apprentice, which introduced the physically handicapped military genius Miles Vorkosigan. She has won an unprecedented four Hugo Awards for works in the Vorkosigan Saga. Last year's Hugo winner, Mirror Dance, was released in paperback in March 1995. Bujold has published a dozen novels to date, all with Baen Books. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Listen to the author discuss the book on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.
Lois McMaster Bujold 
