Red Snow: A Novel of power and desire (Witness to an Era)

An emperor can command another man's death. He cannot command an end to his own nightmares.

Haunted by the dead and terrified of dying, he searches for a way to prolong his life. Around him, consorts and ministers struggle for favour and survival. His most private fear becomes everyone else's danger: in a court where a ruler's wishes carry the force of law, other lives can be spent to preserve his own.

This imperial world reaches us through a manuscript left by Professor Marshall, a scientist missing for twenty years whom a lost explorer encounters in the desert. The account opens onto a vanished civilization, drawing the reader from its ruins into the lives of those who once held power.

Combining speculative fiction, political satire and religious allegory, Red Snow follows the desires and compromises that sustain absolute rule. Its emperor's struggle against mortality becomes a question for an entire society: who must pay when the most powerful man refuses to accept that he, too, will die?