A new month, a new sale. Cool, cool. Now these two books, the last of the Arcana Europa collection, are special -- but not in the way you think. They were the twin runts of the litter, if you will, and they challenged (not fought, but just challenged) me at every turn.
I suppose I should refer to them as the twin brats of the litter instead of the runts. That tracks. I do look back at these two with bemused fondness because my experience working on them still hangs in space above California, and it's become part of the state's climate now.
That's a lot of candor for two books I'm supposed to be advertising for the month, but I'm nothing if not blunt in the best of times (my husband will say "That's because you're an INTJ, which makes you a borderline sociopath" -- but he's an ISFP, so what does he know? 😁 ). I'll touch on these books' creation when I post about each down the line, but yeah.
All writers have their problem children, and these two are mine -- at least in this particular collection. The good thing is that they're nowhere near as problematic as Eidolon (for which I'm still grieving, by the way). As I've said, they're just brats, and if they were human kids, they'd have spent a lot of time in the time out corner. Just saying.
Anyway...
A legend of a long-dead murderer buried in a mysterious maze. A cruel, childish trick gone wrong. A dangerous vow made in trust by a shy and lonely young boy. And somewhere in the idyllic Swedish countryside, a centuries-old entity is summoned from its thorny grave.
Fourteen years later, twenty-two-year-old Fredrik Niequist returns from his travels, a brilliant financier who intends to break new ground in the Swedish agricultural industry by commercializing local nature magic. He is also newly engaged to a wealthy childhood friend in a cynical and loveless partnership.
Twenty-year-old Lauris Ahlberg, meanwhile, turns his mind to botany as a promising apprentice to an English botanic occultist. As he studies a flower species displaying marks of the night world, he realizes the tainted flowers' sudden appearance near his home and the ominous pattern they form signify a terrifying presence coming from a familiar source.
When Fredrik and Lauris cross paths again, old wounds break open, and promises of forever after ring hollow as the two awkwardly rekindle their friendship. And in the meantime, a creeping threat takes physical shape, breaking past its prison of thorns in order to lay claim to what has long belonged to it.
and then we have
Blessed with the unique talent of Inscriptive magic, twenty-year-old Mathieu Perrault leaves his old life in France and the orphanage that has been his home since his childhood for work as the new tutor to a five-year-old mute girl. His head filled with dreams and endless possibilities, Mathieu soon finds himself in a great house tucked away in the quiet wooded hills of the northern region of Luxembourg.
A house occupied by an ailing Dutch artist, one burdened with a terrible secret, and his charming family. A house shadowed by the sudden death of a well-loved servant. A servant, in fact, whose ghost stirs from its dusky world and seeks out Mathieu in terror. Through echoes of past events in unlit hallways, incoherent messages carved into walls, and the eerie vigilance of crows guarding the family, the ghost does what it can to warn Mathieu of a coming danger.
And in the midst of warmth, laughter, and family, of friendship and magic, of young love blooming against a backdrop of terrible heartache and tragedy, Mathieu searches for answers in a dreamer's bid to give the ghost the peace long denied it. All the while, a twisted shadow from the past creeps forward, inching closer and closer to him, a vicious hunger that leaves ruin and death in its wake.
In that isolated great house among the silent trees and the watchful crows, Mathieu will soon learn that the restoration of balance in a world gone awry doesn't always lie in the sphere of ordinary, mortal men.
Both books are 50% off through the whole of September, and for a list of online stores where you can purchase copies of the e-books, just click the book titles above. Onward!
No comments:
Post a Comment