Skull Mantra

• Read a sample of Skull Mantra
• Eliot Pattison on how he was inspired to write Skull Mantra

Reviews

• Is the campaigning thriller a new publishing phenomenon? A letter from Random House UK
• Thomas Gaughan for Booklist
• Kirkus Reviews
• Publisher's Weekly
• Barbara Conaty for the Library Journal

Synopsis

Kham was a vast and wild landscape, located not only on the top of the world but at what seemed the very end of it. It was a land that seemed to defy being tamed, or claimed, a land unlike any Shan had ever experienced. The wind blew constantly over the night and lonely plateau, churning the sky into a mosaic of heavy clouds and brilliant patches of blue. When Sergeant Feng stopped, as he frequently did to consult his map, Shan heard fleeting, unidentifiable sounds, as if the wind carried fragments of voices and calls, strange broken noises like the distant cries of suffering. There were places some of the wold monks believed, that acted as filters for the world's woes, catching and holding the torments that drifted across the Earth. Maybe here was such a place, Shan thought, where the screams and cries of the millions below collected to be beaten by the wind into snippets of the sound, like pebbled in a river.

Quotes

"Vivid, absorbing, intriguing"

--Sunday Telegraph

"Complex, crammed with Tibetan and Buddhist lore and legend and utterly fascinating."

--Daily Telegraph

"A cocktail of action adventure . . . a great read"

--Guardian

"Once in a while a stunning book completely breaks the mould-Gorky Park did it, so does The Skull Mantra"

-- Malcolm Gibson, James Thin

"A great debut novel with the sales potential of Deja Dead"

-- Adrian Stimpson, Bertrams

"A thriller with a great sense of history and landscape"

-- Sue Baker, Hammicks