Jason Shannon

The Hounds of Harujin Jason Shannon

First, there was Attila, who savaged Rome and committed genocide from Asia Minor to Gaul. He was a Mongol, who wandered in from the east, and took up the sword for gold, girls and glory. Then came Genghis, the founder of the nation, who surged outwards from the steppe and wreaked annihilation across two continents. He was a Mongol, who made graveyards of China and the Middle East and left his seed in half the women of Eurasia. Then came Tamerlane, who swirled out of Samarkand like a whirlwind, leaving towers of human skulls and a tidal wave of blood enough to drown an army - and their horses. He was a Mongol, that butchered from India to the shores of Europe, and terrified the Middle East for a half millennium with his curse.... Then came Harujin, who, on the crest of an energy crisis and economic collapse, raised his scimitar like a standard, and charged his horses outwards from Mongolia to usher in the new world epoch.... In Australia, the khan's nephew is assassinated by roadside phantoms. But the khan is more concerned with the chests of his concubines than with Australian dissidence or family outrage. The Mad Queen of Queensland is livid at the death of her son, tensions are mounting between the metropolitan heir apparent and the older, war hardened brother. In the desert, the khan's reclusive daughter cultivates a reputation for murdering her husbands. A young woman is offered for the khan's growing harem, but finds herself the tool of something much bigger. And as the feuding family tensions come to a head, the khan is forced to reach out to his estranged son, and bring him back from a Buddhist monastery to solve a murder.... This edition is one of two volumes of the novel.