Annal:1999 International Horror Guild Award for First Novel

The Divinity Student

Michael Cisco

• 1999 IHG–1st Novel winner
• Score: 10.49

Struck by lightning, resurrected, cut open, and stuffed full of arcane documents, the Divinity Student is sent to the desert city of San Veneficio, there to reconstruct the lost Catalog of Unknown Words from the brains of dead scholars. Will the process destroy him? What powers will the words unlock?

Michael Cisco has created a city and a character that will live in the reader’s imagination long after the book has been read. As Publisher’s Weekly noted in its starred review, “Cisco wields words in sweeping, sensual waves, skillfully evoking multiple layers of image and metaphor.”