The Fall of the Towers Books

The green of beetles' wings ... the red of polished carbuncle ... a web of silver fire. Lightning tore his eyes apart, struck deep inside his body; and he felt his bones split. Before it became pain, it was gone. And he was falling through blue smoke. The smoke was inside him, cool as blown ice. It was getting darker. He had heard something before, a ... voice: the Lord of the Flames.... Captives of the Flame is the first novel in the Fall of the Towers trilogy.

City of a Thousand Suns is a 1965 sf novel by Samuel R. Delany, the final novel in the "Fall of the Towers" trilogy. "This final novel of Samuel R. Delany's trilogy about mankind facing a potential enemy from another galaxy is better than the previous two novels. Delany grew enormously as a writer over the course of this series, producing prose that is frequently poetic. The Lord of the Flames is a truly fascinating alien being. His book, however, becomes unfocused and loses dramatic tension as he becomes more interested in concluding his big statements on the nature of Man without attending adequately to the nuts and bolts of anchoring them in a compelling narrative with a satisfying climax."--David Bonesteel