Does the name Wolfgang Hohlbein ring a bell? Not for me, but it should. Apparently he's the most (or one of the most) popular fantasy writers in Germany, with like 140 million books sold (which is, I think, more than there are German speakers in the world, so at least one of those millions should have reached me). What's even more perplexing is the way I managed to stumble upon him - apparently there's a broken link on Amazon which takes you to a wrong book from an audiobook. Anyway, I really enjoyed the first chapter of the sample. Unfortunately, the link also took me to the last part of the trilogy, so I had to go look up the first part, and now have to see if I also like the beginning of that. (The book itself is called "Flut", just in case you're wondering.)