A far-future adventure that has been compared to the classics Dune and Norstrilia, Lantern Road is the tender, shocking love story of a human slave and the beautiful alien, aristocratic daughter of his owner on a remote planet famous for exporting fungal herbs, perfumes, and glowing magic across the galaxy.Jory O'Call, son of an executed rebel on Oba (which resembles feudal Japan), is a poet and pet at the court of fearsome Lord Ramyon. He was given to young Lady Ramy as a gift when both were small. They formed a bond of friendship that deepened into forbidden love. The Shurians are a human-like race, with women so fair-skinned they seem almost pearly-translucent. They have beautiful eyes, magnificent orbs of russet-autumn hair, and slender bodies. Jory, by contrast, is a rough-hewn, darker-skinned, handsome man who is well-versed in both the courtly arts of poetry and flower arrangement, but just as well in the arts of armed and open-handed combat. Far in the future, Earth is considered little more than a long-ago legend.

Humankind is despised and hunted across the galaxy by its former alien slave races. It is part of a vast, panoramic future history told by John T. Cullen in many SF novels and short stories.When Jory and Ramy are caught in mid-passion, an outraged Lord Ramyon bites his own tongue off in grief and rage. He loves his daughter, but considers her defiled. Shurian custom decrees that Ramy and her nightmarish wasp-sister, Ramy-Baba, must commit suicide together using the ritual nursery-rhyme knives dedicated to the birth and mutual deaths of lovers.There is no escape for Ramy and Ramy-Baba, who die in a moonlit, laquered palace, first the lovely Ramy at the hand of her mother-sister, the sacred Baba. Then the Baba, crying over the body of her love, commits duello so that their blood mingles in the rose gardens of Lord Ramyon.

Jory O'Call, the velvet thief and lover, escapes by the skin of his teeth. Hunted by Ramyon's soldiers and police, Jory travels by dark, on the astounding Obayyo, the Lantern Road, a highway of lanterns and starlight in the eternal night that shrouds fragrant Oba with its fungal-rich plantations and gardens. Jory makes his way to Kusi-O, the planet's only starport, which is surrounded by a giant drum wall. No foreigner may enter feudal Oba from behind that wall, nor may any Oban enter the star port and live to tell about it.In the Kusi-O, Jory becomes caught up in a galactic conspiracy that takes him to the limits of the universe--and his own identity as a human. Humankind are hunted everywhere, but their traders, aided by a mysterious race of star runners known as Ruandap, ply the star lanes under alien flags and hidden papers. Kusi-O is policed by Fril cops, from a neighboring race in the same solar system. A tragic Fril couple take Jory in, which propels him on a series of hair-raising misadventures ultimately leading him aboard a Ruandap trader and out into deep space.

Jory discovers his unique talent as an astrophath, a star navigator. He falls in love with a beautiful but dangerous human woman named Josenda. His journey is fraught with danger, betrayal, glory, and ultimately love again--in a most unexpected and astounding form. "You will never see the ending coming," says one critic who loved Lantern Road.Critics raved: In Lantern Road, John T. Cullen has created a richly-realized far-future world in which strange wonders are revealed as considerable suspense builds.reminiscent of Dune and some of Gene Wolfe's work." --Tim Pratt, Locus Online--Tim Pratt, Locus Online.

See inside the book for other critical raves.".high adventure, imminent danger, and a likeable hero.leads to a surprising, fully satisfying ending that I guarantee you will never see coming."--John Rosenman, author ".A very atmospheric reading experience. I was floored by many of the descriptive passages and conceits." John K.

Muir, CineScape, SciFi Channel, http://www.johnkennethmuir.com/.