'Total and instant immersion... thoroughly compelling and powerful.' - Asian Review of Books In the steppes of High Asia, the year 1166… ‘What is a Mongol? – As free as the geese in the air, as in unison. The flights of the geese promise us we don’t give up independence, to unite.’ The hundred tribes of the Mongols have come together with one aim: to push back against the walls that have crept onto the steppe – farther than China has ever extended its walls before. Walls are repugnant to a nomad. But can people on horses push them down, even with a united effort? This story begins when nobody has heard of Mongols – not even most Chinese, who think the vast Northern Waste at its weakest and are right. A spectacular history starts obscurely… Amgalant gives voice to the Mongols in their explosive encounter with the great world under Tchingis Khan. Both epic and intimate, Amgalant sees the world through Mongol eyes. It’s different from the world you know. 'Expect no easy ride. Author Bryn Hammond evidently thinks that the best way to teach you swimming is to throw you into the deep end. But if you don't drown instantly, and if you brace yourself through the first 10-20 pages of Against Walls , there is a good chance that you'll stay in the magic waters of her world until the end of the story. There are several ways of luring a reader into an unknown universe of distant places and distant times. The simple way is to summon somebody from, say, the Europe of the times and let the reader marvel at all the exotica through that traveler's eyes. That makes easy reading, but seldom shakes one to the core. Total and instant immersion is, on the other hand, a cruel, risky, but rewarding way to do it: a lot of readers will scuttle away, but those who remain will be all the author's. And that's what's good and terrible with Against Walls , namely a total and terrifying realism... I happen to know this world: I've been to Mongolia three times and, recently, in Russia's Altai, which is about the same. I know that Bryn Hammond did a miracle of transporting the reader there, but I've no idea how she did it (that's a real compliment from one writer to another). Hammond has a style of her own which is hard to describe: not light, not sweet at all, but thoroughly compelling and powerful.' Dmitry Kosyrev (Dmitry Chen), author of The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas, in the Asian Review of Books I am a great fan of the Secret History of the Mongols , our unique primary source for the life of Tchingis Khan, and my original for this novel. I follow in its footsteps, for it is a work of art as well as a work of history -- an epic and a biography. It has so much to tell us, if we have ears to hear. I try to listen as attentively as I know how. Bryn Hammond lives in a coastal town in Australia, where she likes to write while walking in the sea. She grew up on ancient and medieval epics, the Arthur cycle original and modern, nineteenth-century novelists, particularly Russian and French, and out-of-fashion poets, namely Algernon Swinburne. Always a writer - to the neglect of other paths in life that might have been more sensible - she found the perfect story in The Secret History of the Mongols , a thirteenth-century prose and verse account of Chinggis Khan. Her Amgalant series is a version and interpretation of this original. Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe is her craft essay, a case study of creative engagement with a primary source. Other work in The Knot Wound Round Your Finger (Bell Press), Lothlorien Poetry Journal , Ergot. , Queer Weird West Tales (LIBRAtiger), New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine .