To reach the Palace, walk a path between two gardens, one box-hedged and orderly, the other wild. Climb porphyry stairs to double doors of brass. There an old man waits, like an archangel at the Gates of Paradise. But this is the Archmage, Koschei Corbillion. He looks old ... then he grows younger as he opens the doors into the Memory Palace. In the vast library of the Palace there are many books about the fabulous land of Malthassa and its Archmage Koschei – books written by Guy Parados. Fantasy novels that have brought Parados fame and wealth in his own world. Guy Parados believes that he invented the Archmage. He thinks he alone built the Memory palace and that it contains his memories. Instead, it contains his soul, and the Archmage Koschei has need of it. In Gill Alderman's powerful novel, magic crosses over from the realm of fantasy to the present day, and it is strange, beautiful and deadly.