Before Game of Thrones, before The Hunger Games... there was Bloodtide. The first in Melvin Burgess"s epic Volsunga duo, now reissued to appeal to a whole new legion of fans. London is in ruins. The once-glorious city is now a gated wasteland cut off from the rest of the country and in the hands of two warring families -- the Volsons and the Connors. Val Volson offers the hand of his young daughter, Signy, to Connor as a truce. At first the marriage seems to have been blessed by the gods, but betrayal and deceit are never far away in this violent world, and the lives of both families are soon to be changed for ever.