The Book of Shai

After science had slipped out of the hands of scientists into the hands of political fanatics, there finally came the time of the Great Burning, followed by centuries of disaster, the tilting of the world's axis, the shifting of the continents, and the slow horrid rise of Newer Order of mankind... Out of one of the last strongholds of stability, the Citadel of the Serpent, came the young man Shai. At first a student believing the fabrications of an unnatural faith, then thrust into the terribly changed world by a catastrophe the Serpent could not prevent, Shai's first quest became a testing for manhood among the ruins of the older barbarisms once called Civilization... A power action novel of future adventure by a master of the fantastic, translated by C.J. Cherryh, and introducing a hero of legendary proportions.