"Echoes of the Great Song" by David Gemmell

War, carnage, and destruction - all the essentials needed to satisfy the archaic human attributes. Somehow though honor and wisdom find their way into this story. Echoes of the Great Song by David Gemmell is a fantasy tale filled with excitement and at the same time philosophical acumen. It achieves this through wars that are not without meaning and dilemmas met with reasoning. It contains the story of a grand empire and its ruler's noble sacrifice that is unquestionably stimulating for spirit and mind.
The Avatars are immortal kings of their world. Their everlasting youth is preserved by the power of magical crystals whose power source now lies beneath 60 million tons of ice. After the sudden arrival of the ice age, predicted by one Avatar thought to be crazy, the Avatars grand city was destroyed and with it the pyramid which grants power to their magic crystals and weapons. …