The Flame in the Maze - Softcover

Praise for Caitlin Sweet "These books infuse the myth of Theseus with the haunted complexities of a labyrinth, made the more unsettling by Sweet's sensuous prose. The Flame in the Maze is a book of both horror and beauty, conveying each with equal, delicate precision." --Ilana C. Myer, author of Last Song Before Night "Caitlin Sweet's shimmering prose, already apparent in her debut novel A Telling of Stars, reaches new heights in The Pattern Scars, which is so replete with luminous images and an evocative atmosphere that even now, a week later, these sensations still haunt my memory as if they had been real, a country I visited and would return to again. It should have been a relief to awaken from The Pattern Scars, after all its horrors. Yet the richness of the world, the complexity of the main character, and the intensity of her tragedy evoke memories that linger for a long time. It is the rare reader who could read this book and be unaffected--or unscathed." --The Huffington Post "[Sweet writes] a world with so much possibility and so much beauty, woven with an adept style that really does convince [me] that Caitlin Sweet is a formidable new talent." --SF Site

The Flame in the Maze picks up the thread of the tale begun in The Door in the Mountain. The Princess Ariadne schemes to bring her hated half-brother Asterion to ultimate ruin. Asterion himself, part human, part bull, grapples with madness and pain in the labyrinth that lies within a sacred mountain. Chara, his childhood friend, tries desperately to find him, accompanied by Prince Theseus, who has sworn to kill him. In a different prison, Icarus, the bird-boy who cannot fly, plans his escape with his father, Daedalus - and plots revenge upon the princess he once desired. All of their paths come together at last, in an unforgettable blaze of fire, hatred, love and hope.