Rodolfo Martínez
Traducción de Rodolfo Martínez, Jordi Balcells, Steve Redwood
Novel, fantasy, science fiction
Ilustración y diseño de cubierta: Alejandro Terán
First edition: March, 2012
ISBN: 9788493920388 — 378 páginas — 1.49 €
The People's Covenant and God's Hammer have raged a Cold War that has lasted for over twenty years. A war without armies, where battles are fought in the dark and information is the most dangerous weapon.
In this world —which sometimes seems the Middle Ages, sometimes the Renaissance and sometimes the Nineteenth Century— lives Yáxtor Brandan, empirical adept at the service of the Queen of Alboné. A relentless, amoral and unscrupulous character, Yáxtor fights to recover his own past as he tries to prevent a new player in the espionage game to end the world, as he knows it.
A fascinating fast-moving and complex plot, full of tension and surprises and excellently paced; a main character for whom it should be impossible to feel the slightest sympathy, and yet somehow we do, even as his cruelty disturbs us more and more –an extremely difficult feat to pull off so successfully; powerful secondary actors, who either leave you with a sense of uneasiness with regard to their motivations and loyalties, or make you want to shout out –as people did in the early days of cinema- “Look out, don’t trust him!”; and a pervading atmosphere of tragedy, especially in a final unexpected and shocking, yet on reflection almost inevitable, scene. In short, a totally addictive and highly original novel set in a world that is at once both strangely familiar and disturbingly alien.
—Steve Redwood, author of Fisher of Devils
A remarkable story by the award-winning Spanish author Rodolfo Martínez, The Queen’s Adept expertly mixes the fantasy and spy thriller genres to create a unique take on religious conflict, our perception of reality, and the manipulation of memory. Thankfully, Martínez’s sequel to this novel is coming out soon, because I seriously need to know what happens to these characters… (...) Like Cat’s Whirld, The Queen’s Adept doesn’t shy away from mixing genres and giving us characters who defy expectations. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in this cycle.
Rachel S. Cordasco en SF in Translation
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Candás, 1965
Página personal: https://rudy.sportula.es
A juzgar por su numerosa obra, Rodolfo es uno de los autores más prolíficos del género fantástico y de ciencia ficción en España. Su larga trayectoria como escritor ha sido recompensada numerosas veces con varios premios, como el Ignotus, el Minotauro o el Asturias de novela.
Narrador de estilo dinámico que gusta de la fusión de géneros, en su bibliografía destacan los cyberpunks La sonrisa del gato (1995) y El sueño del rey rojo (2004), o el space opera Tierra de nadie: Jormungand (1996), además de obras de fantasía urbana como Las astillas de Yavé (2014).
Ha escrito varios pastiches holmesianos de corte fantástico. El primero de ellos, La sabiduría de los muertos, es sin duda su novela más reeditada y popular, traducida al inglés, francés, portugués, turco y polaco.
Su producción breve se encuentra recogida en Disfraces parecidos a mi piel (2020).
En La canción de Bêlit (2017) explora la obra de Robert E. Howard y aporta su personal punto de vista a su más famosa creación, Conan el bárbaro.
En 2020 empieza a publicar su obra más ambiciosa, El hueco al final del mundo,que reparte en varios volúmenes.
Vive en Gijón, junto a Felicidad Martínez y las dos gatas de ambos: Rángiku e Íchigo.
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