France's defining fantasy/science fiction odyssey of the 21st century, the basis of the award-winning video game Expedition 33 and now published in English for the first time, celebrates twenty-three brave warriors of the wind

 

Twenty-three adventurers—each with a unique personality and a precise duty, some trained since birth, some joining over the course of a long journey—climb endlessly against the wind that plagues their desolate homeland. Their only purpose: to make it to the Upper Reaches and identify the wind's mysterious source. Over the course of eight hundred years, thirty-three hordes before them have tried and failed.

 

In this masterwork whose epic scope and visionary world-building are commonly compared to the universe of Dune, author Alain Damasio moves among narrators, alternating between breathtaking descriptions of the unique and bewildering world he has invented—ruled by seven types of wind, classified by their forces—and gripping, rhythmic dialogue.

 

Horde of the Counterwind has ignited the imaginations of more than a million French fans since its publication in 2004. Voted the best book of the twenty-first century by readers of Sens critique and the twelfth-greatest book of all time by Le Monde's subscribers, the novel served as a major inspiration for the celebrated video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. At last, English-speaking audiences will get the chance to shoulder their packs and join the adventure.

 

'An ecstatic and maddened book that takes the fantasy novel and cracks it wide open, disembowels it, and transforms it into another creature entirely. Like B. Caitling's The Vorrh, Damasio's Horde of the Counterwind shows what the fantastic is capable of if it discards the familiar tropes and sets about constructing a world entirely—and ruthlessly—its own. A must read for anyone serious about the possibilities of the fantastic.'—BRIAN EVENSON