A towering multi-volume fantasy, The Pearl, is launched by Eric Van Lustbader in The Ring of Five Dragons. Lustbader, one of the most famous and popular writers of the last three decades, returns to the fantasy genre with his most ambitious work yet.The Kundalan people have suffered for a century under the viciously oppressive, technologically-superior V'ornn invaders, and they can't understand why their goddess Miina hasn't saved them. In the resulting crisis of faith, Kundalan religion falls under the control of evil forces from within who pretend to have no magic of their own and forbid the teaching of traditional sorcery. The V'ornn's mysterious leaders, the Gyrgon, search for the lost Ring of Five Dragons, the key to the door of the fabled Kundalan Storehouse, and perhaps to Kundalan sorcery as well.Misused, the ring could trigger annihilation for V'ornn and Kundalan alike. Now, from among the oppressed, the hero of prophecy must arise, the Dar Sala-at, who alone can wield the sorcerous power to save the world.Thus begins a huge epic, rooted in the conflict between spiritual and technological civilizations, that confronts difficult moral and cultural questions in a manner reminscent of Frank Herbert's Dune.