U’ru – the Dog Lady, freshly-resurrected holy mother of the Ara-Naure. Desperate to find Yashu-Diiwa at any cost.
Vuchak – Weisei’s atodak and Echep’s friend, as loyal as he is frustrated. See ‘atodak’ and ‘a’Pue’.
Wally Hen – short for ‘Wall-Eyed Henry’; a half-white, half-Maia boy who rescued Ah Che.
Washchaw – children of O-San, the Silver Bear. They are recognizable by their considerable height and build.
Weisei – a cheerful, kind-hearted son of Marhuk; Winshin’s brother, and Dulei’s uncle. His refusal to live as an adult has caused Vuchak no end of heartache.
Will Halfwick – Sil’s brother, and Nillie’s twin.
Winshin Marhuk – Dulei’s mother and Weisei’s sister: a fearsome force of nature, whose service to the a’Krah has cost her dearly.
Winter Wolves – a heretical faction of the Lovoka who broke with holy law and attacked the Ara-Naure.
Yaga Chini – a vital oasis in the desert, recently despoiled with the bodies of seven mysterious murder victims.
Yashu-Diiwa – the baby-name of the Dog Lady’s last surviving child, kidnapped in infancy and now believed to be Elim. It means ‘He Loves Me’.
Yeh’ne – Vuchak’s younger sister; Born-Awake’s mother.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
______________________________
That right there is the line where your name goes. You can write it in right now.
It’s a bit crass, leaving you to fill it in yourself – but I want to thank you first, before anything. Because if you’re reading this right now – if you’ve gone to the mountain with me and come back again – then you are the rarest kind of person. You are a reader I should never have had.
There were a million reasons why this wasn’t supposed to work. I heard quite a lot of them firsthand. And it’s still a little surreal to me to be writing this right now – to be putting the capstone on a story I started back in 1999, with a knight in shining armor named Elim and a jackass called Champagne. Finishing it has left me a little bit at loose ends. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to write next.
But I do know what you should read next.
Because here’s the thing. Acknowledgments are generally written for the people who are going to read them – for people who might otherwise never see their names in print. And I do need to tell you about those people. You deserve to hear about Chris Weiler-Allen, a Blackfoot among Hopi, without whom the Dog Lady would have no meaningful redemption. You ought to know Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen, who was born into a body that could not see light, without whom Ah Che’s story would have no savor. And you absolutely must meet my friend Kerri Linn, the Korean-born adopted daughter of white Midwestern parents, and ever-generous queen of creature comforts – my friend Jonathan Rafferty, whose inconvenient bigness is surpassed only by his unrelenting goodness – my friend Merlin Wilson, the soul of gentle, stoic, git-r-done perseverence – without all of whom neither Elim nor I would be even half worthy of your esteem.
But I’ve neglected to thank the people who won’t see this, who don’t know me – the ones from whom I took without asking. Here is the truth: any affection you have for Vuchak and Weisei comes straight from Sherman Alexie – from Smoke Signals’ Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Just so, if you enjoyed Elim and Sil, you owe it to yourself to meet Faulkner’s Cash and Jewel Bundren. To hear Fours, go listen to Tish Hinojosa’s “Carlos Dominguez”. And there are so many more of these people – these inspired voices, these thoroughly American artists whose work is a truer, more essential story of this nation than anything you will read in a textbook. Most of them are not household names. Most of them have not received even a tenth of the acclaim they deserve.
And that’s what I would like your help in correcting. That is what you should read next. If you want another story built over racial divides, read Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets. For an exercise in injustice and forgiveness, read John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers. For fantasy of the Americas, read Nalo Hopkinson, Liliana Bodoc, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Aliette de Bodard, Daniel José Older, Junot Díaz, Rudy Ch. García, Daniel Heath Justice, Owl Goingback – or better yet, make it your mission to find another new voice and shine a spotlight on their work. At the end of the day, I have been a tourist in their lives – and if you’ve enjoyed my little mosaic of pictures and souvenirs, you owe it to yourself to see the real thing. There are more stories to tell in the World That Is, but don’t wait on me. Treat yourself to a broader telling of the story that is our world.
One day every hundred years, a town appears, its location and character different every time. It is home to the greatest miracle a man could imagine: a doorway to Heaven itself. The town’s name is Wormwood, and it is due to appear on the 21st September 1889, somewhere in the American Midwest.
There are many who hope to be there: travelling preacher Obeisance Hicks and his simple messiah, Soldier Joe; Henry and Harmonium Jones and their freak show pack of outlaws; the Brothers of the Order of Ruth and their sponsor Lord Forset (inventor of the Forset Thunderpack and other incendiary modes of personal transport); and finally, an aging gunslinger with a dark history.
They will face dangers both strange and terrible: monstrous animals, predatory towns, armies of mechanical natives, and other things besides. Wormwood defends its secrets, and only the brave and resourceful will survive...
‘If there wa was ever a writer who could write in Technicolor, it’s Guy Adams; his creations leap off the page at you and make you jump back in shock.’
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
www.solarisbooks.com
A WEIRD WESTERN, A GUN-TOTING, CIGARILLO-CHEWING FANTASY BUILT FROM HANGMAN’S ROPE AND SPENT BULLETS.
Wormwood has appeared, and with it a doorway to the afterlife. But what use is a door if you can’t step through it?
Hundreds have battled unimaginable odds to reach this place, including the blind shooter Henry Jones; the drunk and liar Roderick Quartershaft; that most holy, yet enigmatic of orders, the Brotherhood of Ruth; the inventor Lord Forset and his daughter Elisabeth; the fragile messiah Soldier Joe and his nurse Hope Lane.
Of them all, Elwyn Wallace, a young man who only wanted to travel west for a job, would have happily forgone the experience. But he finds himself abroad in Hell, a nameless, aged gunslinger by his side. He had thought nothing could match the terror of his journey thus far, but time will prove him wrong.
On the road to Hell, good intentions don’t mean a damn.
‘A Tour de Force... I could not put The Good, The Bad and The Infernal down. 10 out of 10.’
Daily-Steampunk.com
‘Supernatural cowboys and steampunk Indians... saddle up for an enjoyable ride.’
Starburst Magazine
www.solarisbooks.com
The thrilling conclusion to the Heaven’s Gate Trilogy!
The uprising in Heaven is at an end and Paradise has fallen, becoming the forty-third state of America. Now angels and demons must learn to get along with humans. The rest of the world is in uproar. How can America claim the afterlife as its own? It’s certainly going to try as the President sets out for the town of Wormwood for talks with its governor, the man they call Lucifer.
Hell has problems of its own. There’s a new evangelist walking its roads, trying to bring the penitent to paradise, and a new power is rising. Can anyone stand up to the Godkiller?
‘A true weird Western adventure that grabs you and pulls you in and keeps you there’
The Bookplank
‘Supernatural cowboys and steampunk Indians... saddle up for an enjoyable ride.’
Starburst Magazine
‘If there was ever a writer who could write in Technicolor, it’s Guy Adams; his creations leap off the page at you and make you jump back in shock.’
Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review
www.solarisbooks.com
mpson, Dreams of the Eaten
Dreams of the Eaten Page 51
