Book excerpt: Exciting, imaginative, and inspiring, Hope of Earth is the story of a group of heroic men and women, bound by ties of passion, honor, and blood, who struggle to transcend our violent past and forge and new and shinning future. In Isle of Woman and Shame of Man, the first two volumes of the monumental Geodyssey saga, bestselling author Piers Anthony chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of two remarkable families reborn again and again in some of the most turbulent eras of human history. Now, with Hope of Earth, Anthony brings us a stirring epic that ranges from our ancient beginnings in Africa's Great Rift Valley to the windswept Andes a century from now, and includes some of history's most fascinating figures--the mysterious "Ice Man" of the Swiss Alps, the decadent King Herod, the British Warrior Queen Boudica, the Mongol Chieftan Tamurlane, and King Louis XIV of France. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.