ARTHUR C. CLARKE WINNER AND _SUNDAY TIMES_ BESTSELLER RETURNS TO A WORLD STEEPED IN MAGIC – AND THE TYRANT PHILOSOPHERS' CAMPAIGN TO BRING REASON, LOGIC AND 'PERFECTION' TO IT. As the Palleseen's campaign to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world rages on, Eres Ffenegh – “the City on the Back of a Crab” – is the next state slated for conquest. But its citizens won't give up sovereignty easily. The siege has dragged into winter and the defenders – both locals and Pal renegades – hold an uneasy alliance against the enemy at the gates, while the Pal army is looking over its shoulder for the next self-destructive dictate of their government back home. Within the city, Devil Jack, a good man apprenticed to the notorious conjurer known as the Widow, is driven to bargaining with hell to get back what he's lost. Meanwhile Kiffel ea Leachan is the city's champion, a child of privilege who's just lost everything to the invaders. Both must try to survive the siege and make their own destinies in a world that's cut them loose. Outside the city, Pal reinforcements have arrived to take the city, but it's the sort of help that might just damn them all... THE TYRANT PHILOSOPHERS 1. _City of Last Chances_: portrait of Ilmar, a city under Palleseen occupation 2. _House of Open Wounds_: portrait of the Palleseen war machine at work. 3. _Days of Shattered Faith_: portrait of a kingdom consumed, piece-by-piece, by Palleseen diplomatic subterfuge. 3.1 _Lives of Bitter Rain_: a prequel novella to Days of Shattered Faith, portrait of a life in the Palleseen diplomatic corps. 4. _Pretenders to the Throne of God_: portrait of a city under siege. 5. _The Grave of Perfection_: will take us back to Ilmar, the 'City of Last Chances' where our story began.