Lord of the Crooked Paths

About the Book

"Patrick Adkins is a natural-born storyteller. . . . The man knows how to spin a tale of wonder."  —Mike Resnick

"A most entertaining fantasy story, with a great deal of originality."  —Poul Anderson

"Patrick Adkins has inherited the dawn-dipped, phoenix-feather quill of Thomas Burnett Swann." —Roger Zelazny

For untold ages before the birth of Zeus, Kronos, Lord of the Titans, ruled the world. A giant among giants, the most powerful and revered of all the gods, his unmatched strength and intelligence forged a Golden Age among the Immortals.

But that was long ago. Brooding and increasingly unpredictable, he rules now through fear and unsurpassed cunning, his magnificent palace atop Mt. Olympos rife with whispers of madness and horror.

Only Proteus, the shape changer, Proteus's precocious little sister Metis, and her “pet” humans can pierce Kronos's web of deadly intrigue and prevent a disastrous war of the gods from being unleashed across the earth.

A fast, gripping, and sometimes funny tale of adventure, love, and intrigue among the elder gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, Lord of the Crooked Paths is also a vivid, authentic reconstruction of a lost mythological era—the Age of the Titans. First published as two separate books, the complete story appears here for the first time as originally intended by the author.

"Intriguing . . . Adkins has done an excellent job of bringing together the names of legend and giving them character and motivation." —LOCUS

About the Author

Patrick H. Adkins was seduced by the Muse at the tender age of ten and has been in and out of recovery ever since. At different times he has been a bookseller, small press publisher, "slush pile" reader for Galaxy magazine, medical and technical editor, freelance writer, story doctor, ghost writer, and editor-in-chief of a multimedia publishing company. His published works include Lord of the Crooked Paths, Master of the Fearful Depths, and Sons of the Titans, a highly regarded series of mythological fantasies issued by Ace Books (Berkley-Putnam Publishing Group). An antiquarian in taste and a futurist by inclination, he spends inordinate amounts of time exploring the byways of popular literature, especially 19th and early 20th Century writers, playing with his computer, and ruminating upon the implications of 21st Century science and technology. Presently he is at work on several books and short stories.