A novel by Michael Reaves. A cult of sorcerers seek to put a broken world back together, centuries after it was shattered into orbiting fragments... even if it means resurrecting the very necromancer who broke it in the first place. A were-bear thief is hired to steal an artifact that prevents two of the world's myriad fragments from colliding; when he learns the truth, he must join forces with magicians who oppose the cult to replace the artifact before these populated land-masses crash and destroy each other.
Followed by The Burning Realm.
Tropes for the book:
- Artificial Gravity: The fragments of a broken fantasy planet are kept in orbit and provided with localized artificial gravity by powerful Runestones, allowing life to continue on each F Loating Continent with an immense magically-preserved air envelope. Smaller Runestones are likewise used to generate normal gravity aboard flying ships that travel from fragment to fragment.
- Bat Scare: Beorn is dropped of at Darkhaven's partially-collapsed Spire of Owls, from which he's tasked to sneak into Pandrogas's laboratory and rob it. The Spire lives up to its name, as a large flock of owls are disturbed by Beorn's arrival and flutter past him in the stairwell, verifying that he's starting out in a long-abandoned part of the castle.
- Beast Man: The Cthons sure look like Beast folk, and have the usual abilities associated with this trope, Healing Factor, and communication with animals in particular. They're demonic creatures rather than bestial humans.
- Chekhov's Exhibit: Beorn is introduced when he steals an exotic gemstone which was displayed in this way.
- Clothing Combat: A mercenary cloakfighter is a major supporting character. His cloak has ivory blades woven into its hems, a high reinforced collar to guard his neck, reflective patches in its lining for flash-blinding enemies, and a garrote for a neck-clasp. The Burning Realm shows his childhood training in an extended flashback, revealing that there's a long tradition of cloaks as martial-arts weapons in his native land.
- Crystal Ball: The "casting sphere" is used by inhabitants of the still liveable, orbiting fragments of a fantasy world that broke apart long ago. Such Spheres are constructed of pieces of polished wood, coral, ivory, or crystal, that fit together like a 3-D jigsaw. The crystal ball concept is combined with lot-casting concepts by having each piece represent one of the fragments; when the hollow sphere is dropped, its pieces scatter into patterns from which future events can be divined.
- Noose Catch: Beorn the werebear battles a guardian chimera beneath the Labyrinth of Darkhaven, and leads it away in a running brawl when its chain breaks. Although too formidable for even Beorn's bear-form to defeat, the chimera defeats itself when it leaps across a chasm to attack Beorn, only to have its leap cut short, drop into the chasm, and expire with an audible neck-crack when its trailing chain gets caught up in some rubble at the chasm's edge.
- Salvage Pirates: Used no less than three times, every time a main character goes adrift in the Void between fragments.
- When Beorn falls into the Void naked, he is menaced by a winged vampire; he lures it in, claiming to prefer a quick death, then gets it in a stranglehold and forces it to fly him to land.
- When Beorn and Amber are struggling to cross the sea on a tiring gryphon, their steed is netted by a shipload of dragon-hunters, who demand the gryphon and Beorn's manual labor if they're to carry the pair to safety, not dump them overboard.
- Flashbacks reveal that when Amber and her husband Tahrynyar are cast up on Darkhaven in a storm, Pandrogas the sorcerer saves them both, but ends up stealing Tahrynyar's one remaining possession of value: Amber herself, with whom the sorcerer has an affair.
- Used again in The Burning Realm. When Mirrim the werewolf is left stranded alone on Stonebrow's vacated isle, the first others to arrive are pirates, whom she fools into thinking she's the resident sorceress. When an assassin is trapped in a cavern on the rim of a fragment, the being that "rescues" her is a cacodaemon, which carries her off to slavery. Reaves sure likes this trope.
- Shattered World: It's kind of in the title. The story's setting is a planet that was shattered by the magic of a figure known as the Necromancer. Other wizards created the Runestones that provide artificial gravity to the separated landmasses and maintain their positions relative to each other. The closest thing the world has to an ocean is an inland sea on the largest landmass. Between the continents is the gravity-less sky known as the Abyss. Falling into it leads to a slow but almost certain death by starvation, dehydration, or exposure, which is a popular execution method in some regions.
