The Spirit Lens
by Carol Berg

In a kingdom on the verge of a grand renaissance, where natural science has supplanted failing sorcery, someone aims to revive a savage rivalry...

For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic, sorcery’s decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life’s bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria’s last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled.

As the king’s new agente confide, Portier—much to his dismay—is partnered with the popinjay Ilario de Sylvae, the laughingstock of Sabria’s court. Then the need to infiltrate a magical cabal leads Portier to Dante, a brooding, brilliant young sorcerer whose heretical ideas and penchant for violence threaten to expose the investigation before it’s begun. But in an ever-shifting landscape of murders, betrayals, old secrets, and unholy sorcery, the three agentes will be forced to test the boundaries of magic, nature, and the divine...

Carol Berg's Bio

I am a writer of epic fantasy novels: nine published, one forthcoming, and several more in the process of bubbling up from wherever the ideas come from. Where did I come from? Though my home is at the foot of the Colorado mountains, my roots are in Texas in a family of teachers, musicians, and railroad men. Hot Texas summers were perfect for reading science fiction authors Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, as well as classics, mysteries, and historicals by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers, Mary Renault, and Mary Stewart. Though I love to read and write fantasy, I also read classics, fantasy, mystery, spy thrillers, and historicals.

I charged off to Rice University, determined to have a career in science and engineering, but chose to take every English course offered that listed novels on the syllabus—just so I would have time to keep reading. I graduated with a degree in Mathematics and a pot full of hours in English and History of Art. And it was my college roommate that loaned me the copy of Tolkien that changed my life...eventually.

After teaching high school math for several years, I stayed home to raise three sons, finding time to teach childbirth classes, camp, hike, bike, read a lot of books, and get another degree, this time in computer science from the University of Colorado. For seventeen years I worked as a software engineer for Hewlett-Packard Company—a great company that gave me the elbow room to pursue this writing thing as it began to take more and more of my time. A few years into the engineering career, a good friend of mine teased me into writing stories. The hobby got out of control! I parted ways with HP in 2002—most amicably—to become a full time writer, leaving behind a great team at HP Developer's Resource, and lots of friends scattered throughout the company.

Since Transformation was published in 2000, my novels have won the Prism Award for best romantic fantasy, the Geffen Award for translated fantasy, and the Colorado Book Award. They have been short-listed for the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award and for the Barnes and Noble Maiden Voyage Award, both given for the best first science fiction/fantasy/horror novel and for the Romantic Times Book Club Reviewers' Choice Award for epic fantasy. My books have made the Locus fantasy and science fiction journal bestseller list and have been translated into Russian, German, Czech, Hebrew, and Polish.

My husband Pete is a mechanical engineer with his own consulting business and enough hardware hobbies to supply a small town. Our three sons are just about out of the nest—and have turned into pretty cool human beings.