<b><i>You are familiar with the salt of the earth. But did you know there is an even finer, more delicate essence?</i></b>
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Take wisdom and imagination, responsibility and beauty, and mix them together in arcane proportions to form a rich and peculiar brine. The resulting <i>water of life</i> is an emotional muddy liquid, filled with existential sediment swirling in the light of secret reality and reflecting prismatic colors of hope and wonder. If allowed to evaporate -- escape, flee, ascend into the ether and join the music of the spheres -- what remains is the quintessence; a precious concentrate that is elusive and volatile, neither fully solid nor so illusory as to be devoid of pithy substance. It is the <i>Salt of the Air</i>.
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In this debut collection from the critically acclaimed author of <i>Dreams of the Compass Rose</i> and <i>Lords of Rainbow</i>, the nineteen stories are distillations of myth and philosophy, eroticism and ascetic purity. Dipping into an ancient multi-ethnic well, they are the stuff of fantasy -- of maidens and deities and senior retirees, of emperors and artists and con artists, of warriors and librarians, of beings without a name and things very fey indeed....
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Don't be afraid of ingesting ethereal salt.
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Open your mind and inhale.
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"Cautionary, sensual stories of love, reversal and revenge upend fairy tale conventions in Nazarian's lush collection... Sumptuous detail, twisty plots and surprising endings lift these extravagant tales."
<br>--<b><i>Publishers Weekly</i></b>
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"These are beautiful, haunting confections, reminiscent of <b>Tanith Lee's</b> erotically charged tales... Fine shades of emotion, mythic grandeur, crystalline prose, sharp revisionist intelligence: these are Vera Nazarian's hallmarks..."
<br>--<b>Nick Gevers, <i>Locus</i></b>
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<b>Vera Nazarian</b> immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at the age of 17, and since then has published numerous works in anthologies and magazines, and has seen her fiction translated into eight languages.
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She made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed novel <i>Dreams of the Compass Rose </i>, followed by epic fantasy about a world without color, <i>Lords of Rainbow</i>. Her novella <i>The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass</i> with an introduction by <b>Charles de Lint</b> made the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2005. This first collection <i>Salt of the Air </i>, with an introduction by <b>Gene Wolfe</b>, contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated "The Story of Love." Recent work includes the 2008 Nebula Award-nominated, baroque novella <i>The Duke in His Castle </i>.
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Ancient myth, moral fables, eclectic philosophy, and her Armenian and Russian ethnic heritage play a strong part in all her work, combining the essences of things and places long gone into a rich evocation of wonder.
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In addition to being a writer and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.
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Official website: www.veranazarian.com