Publisher's Synopsis
Dedicated to Jack Vance and Terry Pratchett, the tetralogy entitled "Guama, the Cycle of the Ancient Future" takes place in the imaginary archipelago of Guama, a little isolated world near to ours (possibly north-east of Leeward West Indies) but which, because of the miracles of magnetic anomalies and currents, has remained unknown, with its human life and its special flora and fauna, born of the intermingling of familiar elements. The hero, Augustin Coriac, is said to have disappeared here in 1882. The descendant of a friend sets out to find him and learns this ancestral tale from an old Indian of the Guyanan coast (volume I), who helps him to discover Coriac's memoirs (volume II-IV).The Guama story is, first and foremost, about life in a different and pluralistic universe, whose wealth and dangers, places and inhabitants are gradually revealed. Augustin (who has come to this place to discover the secret of his origins) is caught up, against his will, in the dealings of turbulent populations and machiavelic individuals. Over the course of this rambling saga, he experiences friendship, hatred, sorrow and hope, and unearths mysteries even more exciting than the one wich led him to the strange archipelago in the first place ( the search for a "time warp").In volume IV (The Fate of a Great Dragon), finally, general warfare and denouement become entwined. This is more an Iliad than an Odyssey. Augustin, who has been saved from death, arrives in Clotone at the very moment of Phial d'Atoy's investiture as Minus. The meeting is brief, for this is also the moment when Mortone Trug decides to invade Clotone aided by a fleet of "Transdragon" vessels. The Villacope, jealous of Phial, is quick to betray the new Minus, for which Prince Trug's thanks is a sentence of decapitation on the palace balkony, before the crowd gathered below. Augustin has to restrain Phial, who tries to attack the new tyrant, and persuades him to retreat to Maighty Island to fight the greatest opponents of all: the Thrombe armies, wich have risen up like lava from the bowels of the earth.Professor Olivon Clinus changes his celestial academic interests and invents a musical machine wich stupefies the Thrombe warriors and renders them helpless. Victory is close at hand, but alas, Phial dies saving Lucilia from the Flaming Swamp, after his brief alliance with the spellbinder. The young Homer Bendjou now holds the destiny of the archipelago in his hands.The penultimate episode takes place on the Dysme plain, a plateau covered with white wet sand that holds the secret of the level of the Grand Current. Again, Augustin and his friends win against less nimble-witted but more violent adversaries. The decisive battle between the Thrombes of Trug and the Dead of Savrown The Long, lord of the ancient cemeteries of Sanabille, is fought without difficulty: the Thrombes are overwhelmed by their dead brethren, who propose a game of Boc ( a kind of chess), a passion which they cannot resist.The Great Story is finished, but Coriac must still take personal revenge on the horrible Nardor Botulis, who is waiting for him on Malamè, the island of Desire. After he has tasted his cruel revenge, Coriac meets Nolibé, who becomes his beloved and also his double. Alas, at the very moment when the lovers are about to settle in their home (in the trunk of a huge Agra) the phenomenon wich Augustin had been searching for so long is unleashed: the Translatador, a strange time-space transfer mechanism, carries him off to a fin-de-siècle rural land. Augustin has thus finally found the "passageway", but it is precisely at this point that he does not want it at any price.
