All good things come to an end. And this is it: the last stand of the Ketty Jay and her intrepid crew. They've been shot down, set up, double-crossed and ripped off. They've stolen priceless treasures, destroyed a 10,000-year-old Azryx city and sort-of-accidentally blew up the son of the Archduke. Now they've gone and started a civil war. This time, they're really in trouble. As Vardia descends into chaos, Captain Frey is doing his best to keep his crew out of it. He's got his mind on other things, not least the fate of Trinica Dracken. But wars have a way of dragging people in, and sooner or later they're going to have to pick a side. It's a choice they'll be staking their lives on. Cities fall and daemons rise. Old secrets are uncovered and new threats revealed. When the smoke clears, who will be left standing?
Chris Wooding was born February 28th, 1977. His formative years were spent in a grim, squalid ex-mining town in the Midlands, where the crushing monotony of his surroundings fostered a need for escapism that he found in books. Possessed of a frighteningly sharp focus as a child, he had already determined that he wanted to be an author by the time he hit adolescence; and he had barely reached adulthood by the time he had achieved his ambition. He had a literary agent at eighteen; Crashing was accepted for publication when he was nineteen years old and released soon after.
Now in his late 20's, he has sixteen books and several short stories in print, and his eighteenth, The Ascendancy Veil, is due out in May 2005. The Haunting Of Alaizabel Cray won him the Silver Smarties Award. His works have sold all over the world and been translated into many different languages, including Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Thai, Indonesian and Icelandic. The Haunting Of Alaizabel Cray is in development as a Hollywood movie – for which Chris wrote the script - and a cartoon series of Broken Sky is also in development.
Chris Wooding works as a full-time author in London. When he is not writing, he is generally to be found in the cinema, backpacking around other countries or touring with his band. He is fascinated by folklore, myths and legends, and the history and diversity of other cultures, particularly those of the Far East. He also learned not so long ago that his family tree can be traced back to John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, which has no bearing on him whatsoever but it’s kind of interesting anyway.
