Title: Memories of Ash
Series: The Sunbolt Chronicles, Book
Two
Author: Intisar Khanani
Cover Designer: Jenny Zemanek
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Release Date: May 30, 2016
Publisher: Purple Monkey Press
In the year since she cast her sunbolt,
Hitomi has recovered only a handful of memories. But the truths of
the past have a tendency to come calling, and an isolated mountain
fastness can offer only so much shelter. When the High Council of
Mages summons Brigit Stormwind to stand trial for treason, Hitomi
knows her mentor won’t return—not with Arch Mage Blackflame
behind the charges.
Armed only with her magic and her wits,
Hitomi vows to free her mentor from unjust imprisonment. She must
traverse spell-cursed lands and barren deserts, facing powerful
ancient enchantments and navigating bitter enmities, as she races to
reach the High Council. There, she reunites with old friends,
planning a rescue equal parts magic and trickery.
If she succeeds, Hitomi will be hunted
the rest of her life. If she fails, she’ll face the ultimate
punishment: enslavement to the High Council, her magic slowly drained
until she dies.
***EXCERPT***
There’s something
powerful about being high up on a roof, a great shimmering expanse of
lake off to the side, forested mountains rising to frame the wide
blue swath of sky. With each swing of the hammer, each nail driven
home to hold a shingle in place, I feel my blood thrum through my
veins. Despite the lake breeze that cools me, my tunic sticks to my
back, the taste of salt on my lips. Even as my arms tire, each swing
of the hammer weighing heavier, I don’t want to stop. It’s a
temporary magic, if you can call it magic at all.
The cottage remains
quiet as the sun continues to creep toward noon. I descend from the
roof once to refill my flask from the bucket Stormwind left. I can
detect the faint murmur of voices, but with the door closed, I cannot
catch the words themselves, nor can I hear any better crouched
beneath the shuttered windows. It isn’t until just past noon, my
rooftop magic grown threadbare and the muscles of my arms aching,
that Stormwind comes outside.
“Hikaru!” She
steps around the corner carrying a bowl of stew.
I clamber down,
hammer in hand. Stormwind tips her head toward the cottage, her brow
furrowed and her pale eyes steely. “How goes the roof?”
“Not too bad.” I
ladle water from the bucket to rinse my hands. Is the mage listening,
or is she simply warning me to exercise caution? “What about your
visitor?”
“He is High Mage
Harith Stonefall.”
I raise my brows in
question.
“He’s one of the
High Council’s best rogue hunters.”
“You’re a
rogue?”
I can’t keep the disbelief from my voice. It seems about as likely
as her spontaneously breaking into song and dancing across the
surface of the lake.
“The Council sent
him because they expected I would be hard to find. They do not wish
to waste their time looking.”
I stand still, water
dripping from my fingertips. To my knowledge, Stormwind has had
nothing to do with the Council since I arrived here. “What does the
High Council want from you?”
“Stonefall brought
a summons. I must go back with him at once.” The words are as
abrupt and sharp as the crack of lake ice in the night. I experience
a plummeting moment of nausea. Then I take the bowl from her and sit
down cross-legged with it. A summons could mean anything. It’s what
she hasn’t said, the things her expression won’t let slip, that
worry me.
“What do they
want?” I repeat softly.
She stares down at
the dirt by our feet. “I’ve been charged.”
“With?”
She raises her gaze
to me. The hollowness of her eyes has a familiarity that reaches back
into the ashes of my past. It is a look that has no place in this
quiet valley. “Treason.”
**********
OTHER
BOOKS IN THE SERIES:
The winding streets and narrow alleys
of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at
a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who
her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in
the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the
powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.
When the League gets word that
Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political
family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are
more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than
execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges,
it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.
Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and
world traveler. Born in Wisconsin, she has lived in five different
states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first
remembers seeing snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and
vaguely recollects having breakfast with the orangutans at the
Singapore Zoo when she was five. She currently resides in Cincinnati,
Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters.
Until recently, Intisar wrote grants
and developed projects to address community health with the
Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to
saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions:
raising her family and writing fantasy. Intisar's current
projects include a companion trilogy to
Thorn,
following the heroine introduced in her free short story
The
Bone Knife, and The Sunbolt Chronicles, an epic series following
a street thief with a propensity to play hero when people need
saving, and her nemesis, a dark mage intent on taking over the Eleven
Kingdoms.
***GUEST POST***
Top
Five Indie Fantasy Reads
I
love reading indie fantasy, and not just because I write it myself.
Indie books are where you’ll find authors taking chances, trying
out fantastic new takes on old stories, and going places traditional
publishers fear to tread.
I
have a hard time making top five lists—I’m more of a top 50 kinda
gal—so I narrowed things down for today. These are my Top Five
indie fantasy stories that I read in the last year, in no particular
order, because how could I possible decide?
Twelve
Days of Faery by W.R. Gingell - A fun, intriguing, puzzle-box of
a story. King Markon is about ready to wall his only son and
heir off from the world because every girl the boy so much as smiles
at suffers a terrible fate. Enter Althea, an enchantress with a
brilliant mind and a tendency to take (considered) risks, intent on
figuring out exactly where this curse is coming from, and you have
the making of a great story.
Mourning
Cloak by Rabia Gale - Kato Vorsok was once the Chosen One, and
now he mixes drinks for theatergoers. He is bitter, and broken, and
soul-weary, and then a demon creature (a mourning cloak) speaks his
name and looks at him with human eyes. Between the fantastic
premise, an amazingly rich world, and Gale’s gift for description
and language generally, I can pretty much guarantee you will love
this science fantasy novella.
The
Seventh Magpie by Nancy Chase – A lyrically-told fairy tale,
poignant and bittersweet to the end, The Seventh Magpie is an
exquisite debut by author Nancy Chase. Billed as a tale of "loss
and renewal," this novel offers a story of hope and despair,
life and death, intertwined and inseparable by their very nature.
Stray
(The Touchstone Trilogy) by Andrea Höst - I usually find
diary-style books somewhat underwhelming, but it worked
fantastically in this sci-fi / fantasy / psychic space ninja story.
Can I say that again? Psychic space ninja story. I loved the
many commentaries layered into this story, but don't get me wrong,
this isn't a heavy read. It's fast and enjoyable and the issues
raised are dealt with using a touch of humor and left for the reader
to think about (or not).
The
Pygmy Dragon by March Secchia – This story takes a while to
start, but I couldn’t put it down. It follows the story of Pip, a
Pygmy girl who is enslaved—and put in a zoo. This book is about a
person of color, a girl coming of age, someone whose humanity is
routinely and disgustingly denied them, and she has to deal with
short people jokes too. And you know what? Pip is awesome. But
it gets better, because just when you think you know where this
story is going… dragons! And dragon shifters!
And
that’s my Top Five! I hope you’ve discovered some new reads to
check out here. What have you read recently that you loved? It seems
like there are always so many more amazing authors to discover!
**********
Giveaway
Information: Contest ends June 18, 2016
Undead: a reanimated corpse with a craving for human flesh.
