by Paul Kearney
What in hell?
The glen loomed below him in the gathering brightness. Already there were a few lights on in the windows of the houses. He stood unsteadily, wondering why his clothes felt so odd on him. He was hungry, and his hands were racked with pain.
He sat down once more. There was something at the fringe of his mind, like a picture barely viewed. He felt terrible. But alive—strangely alive. He felt he could laugh at the high peaks and hear his voice bounce back at him exuberantly.
Can’t sit up here all day.
He stood up again. He was quite a way from the bothy, but the sky was clearing and it looked like being a fine day, clear as water. He smiled to the emptiness, the surrounding mountains, the blue sky and the far-off wash of the sea on the shore of Skye.
Then he started off for home hurriedly, because he had a story to write.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Kearney was born in Northern Ireland. He studied Old Norse, Middle English and Anglo Saxon at Oxford University, and subsequently lived for several years in both Denmark and the United States. He lives in County Down, in a croft with a boat by the door.
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Michael Fay is a normal boy, living with his grandparents on their family farm in rural Ireland. In the woods—once thought safe and well-explored—there are wolves; and other, stranger things. He keeps them from his family, even his Aunt Rose, his closest friend, until the day he finds himself in the Other Place. There are wild people, and terrible monsters, and a girl called Cat.
When the wolves follow him from the Other Place to his family’s doorstep, Michael must choose between locking the doors and looking away—or following Cat on an adventure that may take an entire lifetime in the Other Place. He will become a man, and a warrior, and confront the Devil himself: the terrible Dark Horseman...
‘An utterly splendid piece’
Interzone
‘One of the best fantasy works in ages’
SFX Magazine on The Monarchies of God
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Warder John Willoby is being pulled between worlds, disappearing for minutes at a time from the prison and appearing in the midst of a makeshift medieval encampment before tumbling back. That, or he’s going mad, his mind simply breaking apart. It’s clear, to him and to his family, it must be the latter.
His wife can barely stand him, and his daughter doesn’t even try; he drinks too much and lashes out too easily. He isn’t worth anyone’s time, even his own. But in this other world—this winter land of first-settlers—he is a man with a purpose, on whom others rely. A man who must kill a King so as to save a people. With a second chance, Willoby may become the kind of man he had always wanted to be.
‘A tough little fantasy novel that takes a familiar theme and seasons it with a large dose of blackly common sense.’
SFX
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1920S OXFORD: HOME TO C.S. LEWIS, J.R.R. TOLKIEN... AND ANNA FRANCIS, A YOUNG GREEK REFUGEE LOOKING TO ESCAPE THE GRIM REALITY OF HER NEW LIFE. THE NIGHT THEY CROSS PATHS, NONE SUSPECT THE FANTASTIC WORLD AT WORK AROUND THEM.
Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War and the chaos that trailed in its wake. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world, by the shores of Homer’s wine-dark sea.
But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it, because her father cannot bear to hear. She sits in the shadows of the tall house and watches the rain on the windows, creating worlds for herself to fill out the loneliness. The house becomes her own little kingdom, an island full of dreams and halfforgotten memories. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the topmost, dustiest attic of the house. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone in the world as she is.
That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.
‘Very good indeed. A great Oxford novel; and the wonderfully conjured period detail – Tolkien and Lewis are wonderful – given added resonance by the deep past of English myth and mystery that underlies it. The characters are expertly written: they feel absolutely real, and the real-ness evocatively off sets the deftly handled supernatural elements’
Adam Roberts, author of Bête
‘Beautifully written, wryly observed.’
Tony Ballantyne, author of Dream London
‘This is a wonderful, magical book, full of ancient myth and set in an England on the threshold of the modern world.’
Dave Hutchinson, bestselling author of Europe in Autumn
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