The Mask of the Sorcerer

385 pp. Endorsed by Morgan Llywellyn as 'one of the ten best fantasy novels of the past generation.' "Sekenre is 15 years old when his father, a powerful sorcerer, dies. Bereft of the only home he knows, all he wants is to be an ordinary man with a home and family -- but his father's legacy proves inescapable. 'I had killed a sorcerer, and if you kill a sorcerer you become all that he was.' Sorcery is not the same as magic. Magic comes from the gods, passes through a magician as breath through a reed pipe. It heals and satisfies, and is something the magician does. Sorcery, on the other hand, is like a blazing sun, worse than any terror, like opening an unclosable door into nightmare. Sorcery resides in the sorcerer, it's what the sorcerer is, and it will consume him. But Sekenre is determined not to be consumed. Driven from his home, he adventures among common folk, royalty and gods, trying to escape what he is or at least find some comfort in anonymity. Through it all, as he is tempted by all the power and knowledge that sorcery can bestow, he never gives up his struggle to remain human... but will he succeed?"