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Description:

The Universe sits Balanced, suspended upon three legs of Magic: Earth, Shadow and Light. Should one of these three forces gain dominance over the other two, chaos will erupt. If that happens, the Council of Nine and the Starchild will be forced to reset the Balance, calling forth the mythical Four Horsemen to raze mankind from the face of the Earth and bringing the forces of magic back into a state of equilibrium.

The Council of Nine exists to make sure this rarely happens. Composed of three Dawn Lords, three Shadow Lords and three Earth Lords, they guard the Summoning Scrolls and keep their fellows in line. The threat of a Cleansing has been enough to keep the Balance protected for centuries.

Not any longer.

Twenty-three years ago, two renegade Lords and a genetics company started an experiment with two mortal women – a test to see how far they could push the Balance. The experiment was destroyed, and the women escaped, carrying children imbued with Power that no one knows the true extent of, leaving one Lord dead and the other horribly scarred. Now, twenty-three years later, the Shadow Lord Andreas is ready to start again, with Gene-Tech standing behind him. And this time, he’s confident of his success.

Not Your Father’s Horseman is the debut novel from Valerie Griswold-Ford. It was a top ten finalist for ForeWord Magazine's 2005 Book of the Year.

Excerpt:

The Shadows that boiled around the house darkened the sky, reminding Rick of the final scenes from Ghostbusters, right before Gozer the Gozerian was destroyed.

Egon, where are you? He thought irreverently, wishing for a blaster pack.

“I think we’re going to need more than that,” Justin said slowly, looking at the darkness in front of them. “That’s one hell of a Shadow enclave.” He turned to Rick. “Stay here. I’ll go in and find them.”

“Like hell you say.” Rick was already climbing out of the truck. “There’s no way I’m letting you go in there alone.”

“That house is so far into the Shadows now that you’ll never come out, Rick,” Justin argued, also climbing out. “I’m not having that on my conscience!”

“And I’m not going to try and tell your sister how I let you get killed by going in there by yourself,” Rick retorted. They squared off at each other in front of the truck, both handsome faces twisted into stubborn snarls.

Help me! Find me!

The mental plea hit Rick like a ton of bricks, right before the ground shook, and both he and Justin instinctively dropped to their knees. The Shadows roared; then everything stopped.

When Rick opened his eyes again, there was nothing to disturb the sunlight. Rothman House stood above them, serene in the June sun, its windows sparkling. The grass was warm beneath his cheek; he’d fallen on his side, and his arm ached from the impact.

“What the hell was that?” he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his arm.

Justin looked as shaken as Rick had ever seen him, a more alarming fact than that the Rothman House had gone from creepy to cozy in less than sixty seconds. “Someone shifted the Balance,” he murmured, and Rick’s blood turned to ice.

Most people didn’t know about the Balance. However, running with Shanna had given Rick some insights into the magical force that controlled the three Lands – for it to have shifted enough to knock them both over meant something very, very powerful was at work in that house.

And that was a very, very bad sign.

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