A student, a lecturer, a web designer, a retired teacher: four unlikely strangers suddenly find themselves in an unknown country on an unknown world, their ears assaulted by the clash of swords on armour and the whizz of arrows. Caught up in a mediaeval battle, Steve, Gil, Lannie and Denise are rescued by the losing side and hustled to the dubious safety of a basement in a burnt-out castle. Here they learn that their hosts--people not unlike themselves--are the only survivors of a rebellion against the vicious regime of Mindruler Shambor dom Beldet and his country-wide network of Mindbenders. These brutal overlords have mastered telepathy to the point where they can invade people's thoughts and control their lives. Their eyes and ears are everywhere. But in the last free community in the castle basement, the new arrivals are hailed as the long-awaited "Restorers of the Way"--the "strangers and loners" of prophecy, who will overthrow Shambor and bring peace and freedom to the tormented land of DUrion. The foreigners find this idea ludicrous. How can they, four ordinary people, pose as revolutionaries in a country they don't even know? Captured, enslaved, barely escaping, betrayed by one of their own, they are pursued across the country from one precarious refuge to the next by a tyrant bent on their destruction. En route they find friends and helpers in unexpected places, along with other powerful resources--resources the tyrant cannot control. Even so, how can they succeed against his all-pervasive network of mentally-controlled slaves? Can the God they call upon overcome even the Mindruler's unimaginable powers? Are they truly the long-awaited Restorers, who will end his tyranny and set the suffering people of DUrion free? The first of three novels in The Mindrulers series, this book is written by a linguist with significant cross-cultural experience and a love of history. It is set in a richly-imagined world featuring convincing languages, fascinating cultures, and meticulously detailed maps of the characters' journeys. The setting is thoroughly worked out, creating an inner consistency and a breadth of history and geography that gives the reader a sense of reality, and of hidden vistas that may yet open up. Praise for The Mindruler The Mindruler will take you to another planet--very similar to our own--where even your most secret thoughts can be used as weapons of war. In this epic tale of good versus evil, Steve Pillinger has created a rich world and an absorbing fantasy that will keep you turning the pages and wondering: are those thoughts really your own?
-- Fiona Veitch Smith, Crime Writers Association nominated author of The Poppy Denby Investigates series.