Newsletter 103 PDF - large print format - expanded ... - Uncle Hugo's

many of the Phoenicians to flee to Europe and
form alliances with the Celtic princes. About
100 years later, an outbreak of ghouls south of
the Sahara destroyed the west African empire of
Mali, with many of the Mali elite hiring
Phoenician ships to take them, their gold, and
their magic to Europe, where they married into
the families of the Celtic princes. Some of the
Mali hired Phoenicians to take them to South
America and eventually to North America, where
they met the “trolls”, intelligent descendants
of the dinosaurs who are slightly more
technologically advanced than the humans and
very interested in trade with the humans (or
“rats”, as they like to call the humans). And
then there is the new Ice Age, which has lowered
the sea level enough to connect England to
France. And the cold mages are the most powerful
of several different kinds of magic users. Throw
in people (and others) passing back and forth
between our world and the spirit world, plus the
Wild Hunt, plus too many other things to
mention, and you have a very interesting
background for the story.
Cold Magic (#1, $7.99) features Catherine
(“Cat”), an orphan approaching her 20th
birthday, living with a Phoenician family of
modest means that she believes to be her aunt
and uncle and various cousins, including
Beatrice (“Bee”), who is a couple of months
younger and her best friend. When Cat is
suddenly forced against her will to marry a cold
mage, she starts to learn that much of what she
thought she knew is wrong. Cat and Bee start out