The Daedalus Enigma

The sixth Sister of Power presents pirate-turned-vampire Viktor Brandewyne with his greatest challenge yet. Circe proves not only hard to reach: the quest she sets him is fraught with peril from the very start. He must brave a labyrinth to retrieve a puzzle box. He then must revisit each of the Sisters he's already faced. Five pieces of the box were dispersed among them by order of the Elder long before Viktor was even born. The completion of his quest is further barred by a sea dragon, the ultimate form of a male siren, who seeks to claim Belladonna as his mate. Before all is done, Viktor will lose someone very close and important to him. He also has to survive Circe's powers; for she is the same witch from The Odyssey, with the power to turn men to beasts.

Viktor faces a Sister with the power to turn men to beasts, a labyrinth, five other Sisters of Power, a sea dragon, and devastating loss.

The original super-sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, is back on the case - A corpse in a sarcophagus, a headless macaw, and a stolen slice of Black Forest gateau alert Sherlock Holmes to a macabre international crime in progress, and lead him through London’s backstreets to the gloomy moors of Cornwall. People vanish, Greek statues vanish. Even Holmes vanishes – to the distress of his companion, James Wilson, whose emails and text messages go unanswered. But Holmes is in top form, fully recovered from his journey through ice to the twenty-first century and ready to reveal a multitude of secrets . . .

The nature of monstrosity and how scientific invention can be used for good or ill; the humiliation of women, loss and betrayal, the need for refuge and the urge for flight - these are all explored in the sequence of poems that make up 'The Daedalus Files'. But who was Daedalus? In the Greek myth he was a heart-broken father, creating wings that led to the drowning of his son, Icarus. But he was also a designer of statues that seemed lifelike and a labyrinth for the minotaur, a hybrid beast. Twists inside your soul/are well concealed. Was Daedalus inventor or villain? The Daedalus Files is a new book of poetry by Mandy Pannett - author of All the Invisibles, Bee Purple, Frost Hollow and Jongleur in the Courtyard.

The search for the third Sister of Power takes Viktor Brandewyne to Mexico and the Devil’s Daughter. She sends him to find devil’s hoof, but doesn’t explain exactly what it is. All Viktor knows is that she will try to enslave him once he brings it back to her. His quest strands him in the middle of the shark-infested Indian Ocean with no food or water, no wind… and no siren to sing one up for him. Try as he might to reach her, his bond with Belladonna has fallen silent.

Mere Venoma Noir, the fourth Sister of Power, proves to be the most challenging yet for Viktor Brandewyne. She sets him to retrieve an amulet stolen by a notorious slave trader with a reputation for ruthlessness to rival Viktor’s and a talent for black magic. She also possesses the power to turn the siren, Belladonna, against him; and the Sister will use every tool and opportunity she can to kill the pirate-turned-vampire before he can complete his quest.

Viktor Brandewyne’s search for the second Sister of Power leads him to the bayou country near colonial New Orleans. Along the way, he has his first encounter with vampires not made by him, as well as runs afoul of smugglers. The black waters of the bayous hold their own danger, as well. An ancient demon guards the way to the Sister. Worse, the siren, Belladonna, begins to die in the swamps. Should Viktor return the siren to the sea or continue on to the Sister? Without magic from all the Sisters, he won’t be able to break the curse that has made him vampire before it destroys him. Without Belladonna, he cannot find the Sisters.

In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.

Viktor Brandewyne finds himself tasked with finding the most flighty of the Sisters of Power. He tracks her from New England to the ends of the earth. She sets him the task of retrieving three things as the price for a portion of her magic: a dragon's egg, a dodo's egg, and a drop of blood from the Daughter of the Dragon, one of the few beings capable of killing him. Lady Carpathia has her own agenda concerning Viktor. Though she comes to realize just how dangerous he is, she still hopes to seduce and use him to overthrow her master before she ultimately destroys the pirate-turned-vampire. Fraught with danger, Viktor's chances of surviving this quest are almost as slim as those of him completing it. How can he acquire the eggs of a mythical beast or of a creature that has been extinct for nearly a century?