“Reading Chris Willrich feels a bit like playing Dungeons and Dragons® with a drunken Will Shakespeare. Great fun, and beautifully written.”

—Saladin Ahmed, author of Throne of the Crescent Moon

“Willrich puts the mystery back in magic and the majesty back in dragons. Gaunt and Bone are the Han and Leia of heroic fantasy.”

 —Howard Tayler, creator of the Hugo award-nominated Schlock Mercenary

“A literary take on classic swords and sorcery, combining the droll tone and the adventure of Fritz Leiber with the lushness and profoundness of Catherynne M. Valente. Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are just as delightful when pondering poetry or philosophy as when stealing a magic sword.”

 —Scott H. Andrews, editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The Scroll of Years

A Gaunt and Bone Novel

Chris Willrich

Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are a romantic couple, and partners in crime. Persimmon is a poet from a well-to-do family, who found herself looking for adventure, while Imago is a thief in his ninth decade who is double-cursed, and his body has not aged in nearly seventy years. Together, their services and wanderlust have taken them into places better left unseen, and against odds best not spoken about. Now, they find themselves looking to get away, to the edge of the world, with Persimmon pregnant with their child, and the most feared duo of assassins hot on their trail. However, all is never what it seems, and a sordid adventure—complete with magic scrolls, gangs of thieves, and dragons both eastern and western—is at hand.

Chris Willrich (Mountain View, CA) is a science fiction and fantasy writer best known for his sword-and-sorcery tales of Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone. Until recently he was a children's librarian for the Santa Clara County Library System, in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in Asimov's, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Gate, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Flashing Swords, The Mythic Circle, and Strange Horizons.