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SummaryAdventures and treasure hunters traverse through time, space, and parallel dimensions in search of a skin map and the secrets it holds.
StatsGenre: Adult science-fiction
Series length: Five books Violence: Moderate violence Magic/Supernatural: Moderate supernatural, some left unexplained, some attributed to science Romance: Light to moderate Christian/spiritual element: Subtle elements Recommendation: Readers who like mind-benders and exploring a wide variety of historical periods and places You might like this book if you liked... Quantum Leap |
Opening Lines:
Had he but known that before the day was over he would discover the hidden dimensions of the universe, Kit might have been better prepared. At lest, he would have brought an umbrella. Like most Londoners, Kit was a martyr to the daily travails of navigating a city whose complexities were legendary. he knew well the dangers even the most inconsequential foray could involve. Venturing out into the world beyond his doorstep was the urban equivalent of trial by combat and he armed himself as best he could. He had long ago learned his small patch of the great metropolitan sprawl; he knew where the things most needful for survival were to be found and how to get to them. He kept in his head a ready-reference library of street maps, bus routes, and time schedules. He had memorised the pertinent sections of the London Underground tube schematic; he knew the quickest ways to work, and from work to his favourite pubs, the grocers, the cinema, the park where he jogged. Sadly, it was rarely enough. |
The Skin Map (Bright Empires, Book 1)
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Opening Lines:
From a snug in the corner of the Museum Tavern, Douglas Flinders-Petrie dipped a sop of bread into the gravy of his steak and kidney pudding and watched the entrance to the British Museum across the street. The great edifice was dark, the building closed to the public for over three hours. The employees had gone home, the charwomen had finished their cleaning, and the high iron gates were locked behind them. The courtyard was empty and, outside the gates, there were fewer people on the street now than an hour ago. he felt no sense of urgency: only keen anticipation, which he savoured as he took another draught of London Pride. He had spent most of the afternoon in the museum, once more marking the doors and exits, the blind spots, the rooms where a person might hide and remain unseen by the night watchmen, of which there were but three to cover the entire acreage of the sprawling institution. |
The Bone House (Bright Empires, Book 2)
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Opening Lines:
Cassandra Clarke dug bones for a living. She spent every summer of her professional life hunkered down in trenches of various depths with a trowel in one hand and a whisk broom in the other, excavating the skeletal remains of creatures long dead, many of which were known only to science and some known to no one at all. Although digging was in her blood--her mother was Alison Brett Clarke, palaeontologist of Turkana Boy renown--Cassandra did not plan to spend her entire life in plexiglas goggles with dust in her hair and a damp handkerchief over her nose. her ambition was far greater than crating up fossils to be carefully catalogued and then locked away in some musty museum basement. |
The Spirit Well (Bright Empires, Book 3)
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Opening Lines:
Kit stood gazing at the burnt-out ley lamp still sizzling at his feet. The heat from the metal carapace had singed the dry grass, sending tiny tendrils of white smoke drifting up to assault his nostrils with a harsh metallic scent. overpowered by the energy coursing around and through the enormous tree before them, the devices had expired in a burst of heat and blue light. "I guess that's that," he concluded. |
The Shadow Lamp (Bright Empires, Book 4)
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Opening Lines:
Gordon Seiferts looked out the window of the operations module of Skybase Alpha. he blinked and looked again because he saw something that should not have been there: the moon. Captain Seiferts was undertaking his daily background radiation reading and thermal image of Earth, but the blue planet was nowhere to be seen in his field of vision. He swivelled the camera 230 degrees and was able to bring Earth into view, but the metrics were all skewed. Fearing that the space station had somehow drifted out of orbit, he hurried down to the command module, where the mystery was compounded. |
The Fatal Tree (Bright Empires, Book 5)
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