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Threshold (Sara Douglass Novel)
''Threshold'' is a 1997 fantasy novel by South Australian author Sara Douglass. The novel forms a prequel to Douglass's 'Darkglass Mountain' trilogy Plot Set in the Egypt-like kingdom of Ashdod and primarily narrated by the glass-working slave Tirzah, the novel takes place during the final stages of the construction of the titular Threshold, an enormous glass-clad pyramid. Designed by the Magi Magi (), or magus (), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Per ..., an order of mathematically obsessed sorcerers, it is meant to open a gateway into Infinity, allowing the Magi to pass through and unite themselves with the One, an abstract proto- Platonic ideal of perfection. When the pyramid is activated, however, it instead allows the demonic entity Nzame to cross from Infinity into Ashdod, taking cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sara Douglass
Sara Warneke (2 July 1957 – 27 September 2011), better known by her pen name Sara Douglass, was an Australian fantasy writer who lived in Hobart, Tasmania. She was a recipient of the Aurealis Award for best fantasy novel. Biography A great-granddaughter of psychic Robert James Lees, Douglass was born in Penola, South Australia. She attended Annesley College, in Wayville, a suburb of Adelaide. She studied for her BA while working as a registered nurse, and later completed her PhD in early modern English History. She became a lecturer in medieval history at La Trobe University, Bendigo. While there she completed her first novel, ''BattleAxe'', which launched her as a popular fantasy author in Australia, and later as an international success. Until the mid-2000s, Douglass hosted a bulletin board on her website, with the aim of encouraging creative thinking and constructive criticism of others' work. She maintained an online blog about the restoration project of her house a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fantasy Novel
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. magic (paranormal), Magic, the supernatural and Legendary creature, magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults. Fantasy is considered a genre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror fiction, horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these may overlap. Historically, most works of fantasy were in literature, written form, but since the 1960s, a growing segment of the genre has taken the form of fantasy films, fantasy television, fantasy television programs, graphic novels, video games, music and art. Many fantasy novels originally written for children and adolescents also attract an adult audience. Examples include ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', the ''Harry Potter' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voyager Books
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the " Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and London and is a subsidiary of News Corp. The company's name is derived from a combination of the firm's predecessors. Harper & Brothers, founded in 1817 in New York, merged with Row, Peterson & Company in 1962 to form Harper & Row, which was acquired by News Corp in 1987. The Scottish publishing company William Collins, Sons, founded in 1819 in Glasgow, was acquired by News Corp in 1987 and merged with Harper & Row to form HarperCollins. The logo for the firm combines the fire from Harper's torch and the water from Collins' fountain. HarperCollins operates publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and China, and publishes under various im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardback
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as casebound (At p. 247.)) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Overview Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a "jacketless" alternative has increased in popularity: these "paper-over-board" or "jacketless" hardcover bindings forgo the dust jacket in fav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, also known as wrappers, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellow-backs, yellowbacks and dime novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novel
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term ''romance''. Such romances should not be con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which includes some of the most arid parts of the continent, and with 1.8 million people. It is the fifth-largest of the states and territories by population. This population is the second-most highly centralised in the nation after Western Australia, with more than 77% of South Australians living in the capital Adelaide or its environs. Other population centres in the state are relatively small; Mount Gambier, the second-largest centre, has a population of 26,878. South Australia shares borders with all the other mainland states. It is bordered to the west by Western Australia, to the north by the Northern Territory, to the north-east by Queensland, to the east by New South Wales, to the south-east by Victoria (state), Victoria, and to the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashdod
Ashdod (, ; , , or ; Philistine language, Philistine: , romanized: *''ʾašdūd'') is the List of Israeli cities, sixth-largest city in Israel. Located in the country's Southern District (Israel), Southern District, it lies on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean Israeli coastal plain, coast south of Tel Aviv and north of Ashkelon. Port of Ashdod, Ashdod's port is the largest in Israel, handling 60% of the country's imported goods. Modern Ashdod was established in 1956 on the sand hills 6 kilometers northwest of the Ashdod (ancient city), ancient city of Ashdod, known in modern times by its Arabic name Isdud. Isdud had been depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, having had a history spanning approximately 3,700 years. In ancient times, ancient Ashdod developed as an active maritime trade center, with its ports identified at Ashdod-Yam and Tel Mor. In History of ancient Israel and Judah, biblical times, it was one of the five principal cities of the Philistines. Ashdod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magi
Magi (), or magus (), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanism, Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest. Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia until late antiquity and beyond, ''mágos'' (μάγος) was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek ''The Lesser Key of Solomon#Ars Goetia, goēs'' (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic (paranormal), magic, with a meaning expanded to include astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for Pseudo-Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the Chaldean founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that stil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Platonic Idealism
The Theory of Forms or Theory of Ideas, also known as Platonic idealism or Platonic realism, is a philosophical theory credited to the Classical Greek philosopher Plato. A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as Forms. According to this theory, Forms—conventionally capitalized and also commonly translated as Ideas—are the timeless, absolute, non-physical, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the physical world merely participate in, imitate, or resemble. In other words, Forms are various abstract ideals that exist even outside of human minds and that constitute the basis of reality. Thus, Plato's Theory of Forms is a type of philosophical realism, asserting that certain ideas are literally real, and a type of idealism, asserting that reality is fundamentally composed of ideas, or abstract objects. Plato describes these entities only through the characters (primarily Socrates) in hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1997 Australian Novels
Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 16 – Murder of Ennis Cosby: Near Interstate 405 (California) on a Los Angeles freeway, Bill Cosby's son Ennis is shot in the head in a failed robbery attempt. * January 17 – A Delta II rocket carrying a military GPS payload explodes, shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. * January 18 – In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members kill 6 Spanish aid workers and three soldiers, and seriously wound another. * January 19 – Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after more than 30 years, and joins celebrations over the handover of the last Israeli-controlled West Bank city. (→ Hebron Agreement) * January 23 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State of the United States, after confirmation by the United States Senate. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
