FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Ancient Legacy, the concluding volume of Mitchell Graham's Fifth Ring trilogy (The Fifth Ring and The Emerald Cavern), is an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning epic about one young man's quest to save his country -- and all of humanity -- from hordes of inhuman cannibal invaders.

The Ancient Legacy begins with many of the large cast of protagonists either incarcerated or presumed dead. Father Thomas Siward, a warrior priest, and Gawl, the giant king of Sennia, are being held captive by Sennia's usurping government. Mathew Lewin, the quiet farm boy who has reluctantly become the savior for the human race, is presumed dead. But as Shakira, queen of the Orlocks -- a slave race created by mankind millennia ago -- moves closer to her goal of world domination, the forces of humankind temporarily put an end to their hostilities and join in a final, desperate attempt to stop the seemingly endless swarms of Orlocks. Can one young man with a strange and powerful rose-gold ring defeat an army of inhuman savages?

Although Graham's series is comparable to other recent fantasy sagas -- specifically, Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of Ages saga (Rhapsody: Child of Blood, Prophecy: Child of Earth, et al.) and David Farland's Runelords sequence -- his Fifth Ring trilogy is rendered unique by his seamless blend of high fantasy and science fiction. The series is as much a sword-and-sorcery fantasy epic as it is a post-apocalyptic thriller. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The power of the Ancients was once harnessed on the hand of young Mathew Lewin in the form of a rose gold ring. But the treachery of a cruel and beautiful enemy changed all that.

For three years, the world has believed Mat Lewin dead, slain by Teanna, the mysterious Nyngary princess who stole his rose gold ring. Now he has been drawn out of hiding by a long-awaited opportunity to retrieve what is rightfully his, thereby reclaiming the power to free his enslaved homeland. But the world he's returning to has changed. The Orlocks have risen aboveground, led by their insidious queen Shakira, possessor of another of the rings, a mighty army, and a dark dream: the annihilation of humanity. Only by joining forces with his adversary can Mat stop the doom that confronts the world and save a future that may already be lost.

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