{"product_id":"2940149659227","title":"Academic Exercises","description":"Academic Exercises is the first collection of shorter work by master novelist K.J Parker, and it is a stunner. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this generous volume gathers together thirteen highly distinctive stories, essays, and novellas, including the recent World Fantasy Award-winner, \"Let Maps to Others\". The result is a significant publishing event, a book that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of imaginative fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe collection opens with the World Fantasy Award-winning \"A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,\" a story of music and murder set against a complex mentor\/pupil relationship, and closes with the superb novella \"Blue and Gold,\" which features what may be the most beguiling opening lines in recent memory. In between, Parker has assembled a treasure house of narrative pleasures. In \"A Rich, Full Week,\" an itinerant \"wizard\" undergoes a transformative encounter with a member of the \"restless dead.\" \"Purple and Black,\" the longest story in the book, is an epistolary tale about a man who inherits the most hazardous position imaginable: Emperor. \"Amor Vincit Omnia\" recounts a confrontation with a mass murderer who may have mastered an impossible form of magic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRounding out the volume--and enriching it enormously--are three fascinating and illuminating essays that bear direct relevance to Parker's unique brand of fiction: \"On Sieges,\" \"Cutting Edge Technology,\" and \"Rich Men's Skins.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaken singly, each of these thirteen pieces is a lovingly crafted gem. Together, they constitute a major and enduring achievement. Rich, varied, and constantly absorbing, Academic Exercises is, without a doubt, the fantasy collection of the year.","brand":"Subterranean Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47165049405680,"sku":"2940149659227","price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940149659227_p0.jpg?v=1763721082","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940149659227","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}