Exaltations

Peter Refton is a hunter of human lives. Across a score and more of Earths he has caught and captured the most fascinating and pivotal people. The knight who reformed Charlemagne's army. The bureaucrat who oversaw China's expansion and control. The inspirer of wisdom in a million seekers of understanding.

Peter Refton is that most dangerous of hunters: the biographer. He has made trophy-stories of so many, and boldly carries their lives around from world to world. Then one day, a story comes to hunt his life.

Now, caught between worlds and aided by a knight, an ancestress, a sorceress muse and twin warriors, Peter Refton is on a Quest to --

-- To free himself from the coils of the most voracious of stories: the Quest. To fight the Quest itself -- and those who told the story onto him.
Richard Garfinkle's Exaltations is an allegorical novel about the ways the channels of stories affect human thought, and about love, faith, devotion, and the tyranny of quests, involving alternate histories and fictional realities wrapped up in a stirring adventure story