A Man Rides Through
core novel 1987 Mordant's Need
Record
| First published | 1987 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.03 (13,265 ratings, collected 2026-10-07) |
| Page count | 661 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780345332998 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The second volume picks up exactly where the first broke off, with the Alend army laying siege to Orison and the kingdom of Mordant tearing itself apart. Terisa, who in her own world could not be sure she existed, has discovered in Mordant that she has a talent for Imagery no one anticipated, and she and Geraden, the clumsy apprentice who brought her through the glass, must escape the castle and penetrate the secret manoeuvrings of King Joyse, who may not be as feeble as he seems, and of his senile wizard, so that the evil threatening the land can be named and defeated. The arch-Imager Eremis's plots, the wars of Alend and Cadwal, and the truth of what Imagery can do when mirrors stop being windows and become weapons come together in the novel's conclusion.
Where it sits
- Universe: Mordant's Need
- Series: Mordant's Need core; position 2 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Stephen R. Donaldson
Notes
- From the series record (Mordant's Need): Stephen R. Donaldson's two-volume novel of Terisa Morgan, a New York woman who doubts her own existence, drawn through one of her mirrors into Mordant, a medieval kingdom where Imagery, a magic of mirrors, is the weapon of politics and war. Donaldson has cited Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast as its model.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Mordant's Need: position 2 of 2: previous The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986)
Sources
← Mordant's Need dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.