Carolyn Kay

Tensions are high in the Hidden Lands. A rogue tribe of elves, the Svellvega, are recruiting their fae brethren and preparing for war. Galessel and her friends have stopped Queen Victoria's invasion but rumors fly like ripe strawfaeries that humans are attempting to infiltrate the Hidden Lands once again, carrying weapons of deadly cold iron. In this third and final installment of Galessel's tale, Galessel is still sikevra - an outcast due to the mutilation of her elven ears by a Svellvegan pirate. Forced to hide in her family's palace in Anisbar, she trains daily with the human sword-master, Navarre, ready for the opportunity to sneak away and help her people. Meanwhile, her erstwhile companions; Clove, her faun best friend, Morgan the sharp-shooter, Samga the archer, and Eirsal the sylph, range throughout the Hidden Lands to find the truth of the human incursion and the Svellvega's treachery. What they don't know is that Queen Victoria has a new plan and the help of a ruthless pirate to carry it out, one who is hellbent on destroying the Hidden Lands, one genocide at a time. Will Galessel and her friends be able to save the Hidden Lands? Or will magic fade from the world forever?

The year is 1850 in the world of man. Fifty years ago, a comet crashed into the continent of Zorrovia, bringing destruction and a magical curse. Faerie glamour is no more. All of the fae folk-elves, trolls, goblins, gnomes, faeries and their kith and kin have been revealed to mankind. Now the mortals of Ashelon and the citizens of the Hidden Lands struggle to coexist. Galessel, Princess of the Elven court, is the newly appointed ambassador to Queen Victoria of Ashelon. She's nervous about her new post, and curious to see for herself how the beings of the Hidden Lands are faring among the mortals. What she discovers leads her down a path that could change her world forever. Ashelon is a land where true steampunk is on display. These aren't just pretty little Victorian tales. These are gritty stories about multi-cultural punks fighting against the establishment in an attempt to destroy Imperialism. Only one thing stands in their way: Ashelon's Queen Victoria and the gods that are on her side.

In this new study of art in fin-de-siècle Hamburg, Carolyn Kay examines the career of the city's art gallery director, Alfred Lichtwark, one of Imperial Germany's most influential museum directors and a renowned cultural critic. A champion of modern art, Lichtwark stirred controversy among the city's bourgeoisie by commissioning contemporary German paintings for the Kunsthalle by secession artists and supporting the formation of an independent art movement in Hamburg influenced by French impressionism. Drawing on an extensive amount of archival research, and combining both historical and art historical approaches, Kay examines Lichtwark's cultural politics, their effect on the Hamburg bourgeoisie, and the subsequent changes to the cultural scene in Hamburg. Kay focuses her study on two modern art scandals in Hamburg and shows that Lichtwark faced strong public resistance in the 1890s, winning significant support from the city's bourgeoisie only after 1900. Lichtwark's struggle to gain acceptance for impressionism highlights conflicts within the city's middle class as to what constituted acceptable styles and subjects of German art, with opposition groups demanding a traditional and 'pure' German culture. The author also considers who within the Hamburg bourgeoisie supported Lichtwark, and why. Kay's local study of the debate over cultural modernism in Imperial Germany makes a significant contribution both to the study of modernism and to the history of German culture.