THE DEVILS, WILDWOOD RISING and SOTJ1 launch reviews
Fantasy Novel News
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In this BUMPER edition newsletter:
Fantasy Novel News
Free and discounted fantasy ebooks
New reviews of SOTJ1
What I’ve been working on
In other news
!NEW! Comics Corner
What I’ve been reading
What Jo’s been reading
What I’ve been listening to
New episode of ongoing fantasy serial SAGA OF THE JEWELS
Dear reader,
Here’s your Fantasy Novel News for this month (please note the recent rebrand from ‘Fantasy Books News’—I’m going even more niche!).
Fantasy Novel News
Lots of awesome new fantasy novels were released last month. Here’re my picks:
Joe Abercrombie really does not need any more publicity for THE DEVILS (George RR flipping Martin even wrote a blog post about it!) but I can’t really run a fantasy novels newsletter without mentioning it, can I? What I can give you that nobody else can, though, are my opinions: I’ve read five Abercrombie books so far and absolutely loved two of them (and liked the others) so I am super excited to read this. However, £13 for an ebook?! You must be ‘aving a laugh! My cheapskate self will wait until the second one comes out and I can pick this one up for a 0.99 deal, thankyaverymuch.
Another May release you may have missed is the traditionally-published WILDWOOD RISING by
, last in his critically acclaimed dark-fantasy-Robin-Hood-retelling BLIND BOWMAN trilogy, which I’m spotlighting because T.K Hall is a friend of this newsletter who writes a pricelessly helpful substack about how to flourish as a writer. If you’ve been waiting until the series was complete to pick this one up, now is the time!
My other pick of last month’s releases is EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD EXCEPT ME, the second in Django Wexler’s comedy DARK LORD DAVI series. I haven’t actually read this, but it’s on my TBR and the first one has done really well. I’m also mentioning it here because if you didn’t know you can get a free dragon adventure fantasy novella off Wexler called HOARD by subscribing to his newsletter at djangowexler.com (from which you can then also unsubscribe immediately—but hey, don’t get any ideas!)
And yes, it’s cheeky I know, but this is my newsletter after all, so just a reminder that SOTJ1 aka SAGA OF THE JEWELS BOOK ONE: FIRE AND LIGHTNING also came out last month. It’s done surprisingly well on Amazon and Goodreads so far (see reviews below or at one of the links) so remember you can still get a free digital ebook review copy here or a 0.99 ebook here or a cheap paperback here!
Moving on to non-new-release fantasy novel news, the tenth Self-Published-Fantasy-Blog-Off now has a winner, and it’s called BY BLOOD, BY SALT by L.L. Odom—a desert-set military adventure fantasy which looks really cool. Here’s the SPFBO announcement, and here’s the book’s Goodreads page.
The next in Jim Butcher’s wildly popular urban fantasy series THE DRESDEN FILES will be called TWELVE MONTHS and published in January. Check out this recent NYT interview with Butcher where he opens up about his mental health difficulties too.
The 2025 Locus Awards Top Ten Finalists have been announced. Here are the Top Ten Finalist fantasy novels with amazon and bookshop links included:
I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, Peter S. Beagle (Saga) amazon / bookshop
The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape UK) amazon / bookshop
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom) amazon / bookshop
The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK) amazon / bookshop
A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK) amazon / bookshop
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, TJ Klune (Tor; Tor UK) amazon / bookshop
The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed (Solaris UK) amazon / bookshop
Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit US; Orbit UK) amazon / bookshop
The winners of the 2025 British Book Awards were announced, mentioned here because the winner in the Pageturner category was the fantasy (well, er, romantasy) novel FAEBOUND.
The winners of the 2024 Aurealis Awards for best Australian speculative fiction were announced (this is an English newsletter; Australians more-or-less speak and write in English). The winner of best fantasy novel was THOROUGHLY DISENCHANTED by Alexandra Almond.
Your free and discounted fantasy ebooks for this month:
New reviews of SOTJ1
Did I mention SAGA OF THE JEWELS BOOK ONE was published last month? It’s actually done way better than I expected, and way better than any book I’ve ever had published before at launch and in its first month. Here’s a capture from its Amazon US page at the time of writing:
41 global Amazon reviews, average 4.5 out of 5, and 35 Goodreads ratings, average 4.7 out of 5! Wohoo!
How did I get these reviews? Well, my aim with SOTJ1 is not to make money, but to get it read and to get honest reviews on it. I did this by:
(a) Giving it away for free. (Did I mention you can have a digital review copy for free? Here you go.)
(b) Using ARC distribution sites like BookSprout and HiddenGems, which I’ve never used before.
And (c) I bought it a Freeboosky promotion for its publication day.
I can’t possibly screenshot all of the reviews I received last month here, so I’ll just showcase a selection.
First, it turns out that when you use sites like BookSprout and HiddenGems, not everyone will read the book even though they review it. For example, I am suspicious that this person did not actually read the book:
Much better in every way are the reviews that give you insight into a reader’s experience of the book and the absolute gold are the ones that give you constructive feedback too. Of those two kinds of reviews, here are a selection of my favourites from the last month:
Thanks, Chris! (Click on his review to read his ‘cons’ too!)
Thanks, Gloria!
Thanks, AKC!
Thanks, MSM! My review of the month. If you and AKC could also buy the book for 0.99 to get a ‘Verified Purchase’ badge on your reviews I’d be much obliged, as I’d love more people to see them!
Thanks, AE!
Thanks, Sophie T!
Thanks, KT!
I’ve even have enough reviews on SOTJ1 on Amazon now to get one of those AI-generated summaries of all the reviews. Here’s the one from Amazon US:
That’s a pretty cool AI summary. Yay!
Getting a bunch of reviews on your book also shows you how wildly reader opinions can differ, which must be confusing to the browsing public. For example, one review headline from last month read:
While another said:
How do you know which one to believe? Maybe go with the one with the lower rating as it’s more likely to be honest?
Just to clear it up: SOTJ1 does have violence and trauma (like most things on teens’ TV). It does not have romantic heat. It does not have bad language, except for some made-up swearwords which are obvious stand-ins for real ones, and also Sagar sometimes says ‘godsdammit’. I’m sorry—I’ve tried controlling him, but I can’t.
This one, by the way, is Jo:
Unfortunately Jo, who had an early draft of SOTJ1 read aloud to her by me many years ago, has forgotten that it isn’t actually ‘Multi-POV’ (that’s Book 2), that I already gave it to our ‘godson’, and also she forgot to actually buy the book for 0.99 in order to get the ‘Verified Purchase’ badge on her review (hint hint). Never mind, hon, I love you regardless!
Anyway, a huge thank you to everyone who read and left a review on SOTJ1 last month: LeeEllen, Chris, Julie Drucker, Gloria,
, Carmen, ThePlacesIHaveBeen, Debbie Harris, DeeAnn, Kendra G, TV, Taliesin De Launey, Janel Crowe, Laure Eccleston, Karenb, Carole, Jessica, Tannembaum Stocklein, JH, AKC, Terry Steinke, S. Walker, MinnesotaGirl, Phthon, mw, Christy, Julie, Sentinelle23, Loes, Kevin Cannon, Superfastgran, Edward Jackson, Jacqueline Corral, Sita Ami, Angie Hardy, Stephen Hibbs, Stephanie T, Jacquetta Harvey, Tanya, Mik Wasiak, Christinaraven, Rachel Lin, and anyone else I’ve left out by accident!I’m still chasing my goal of getting 50 reviews on SOTJ1 so that I become eligible to apply for a BookBub promotion (I’m 82% of the way there!) so if you want to help me out please leave it an honest review if you’ve read it or pick up a free digital review copy if you haven’t.
What I’ve been working on
Welp, I spent lots of last month with a horrible sinus infection which made orange custard come out of my nose and meant that I was just barely able to parent and do my day job (and sometimes not even those) let alone write. When I was able to write, I’ve actually been working on editing a non-fiction project as a break from SOTJ for a while. Nonetheless, I started missing SOTJ, especially when all the reviews started coming in, so when half-term break came around I took some time off from the non-fiction project by pressing on with SOTJ4. I’m at the point now where writing fantasy is a recreational activity for me and I do it for a rest when Jo is out in the evenings. Here’s a little teaser first-draft snippet to whet your appetite:
Oh, and the SOTJ2 cover continues to progress with miblart. Here’s the latest draft:
By the way, remember you can already preorder SOTJ2 here!
In other news
So it turns out quite a lot happened in ‘real life’ last month. Towards the start of the month I took a team from the high school that I teach at to compete in the UK National ‘Philosothon’ (philosophizing competition) Final at England’s most famous school, Eton College—that’s me on the far left. We already caused a major upset when we won our South East regional heat by beating the best private school in Oxford, and we were the only non-selective state (Americans read: public) school in the Final. And in the Final we came…second! By a decimal point! An astonishing achievement bt these amazing kids of whom I am incredibly proud. School news article here: https://www.cheneyschool.org/137/news/post/113/philosothon-uk-final
More importantly, last month Jo had the last of her post-cancer-treatment check-ups, continued to be all-clear for now approximately two ears , and was thus DISCHARGED FROM THE CLINIC. So, pardon my French, but FUCK YOU, CANCER!!! Glory to God. Here’s her celebrating with tea and an iced bun with the 7yo and 2yo:
!NEW! Comics Corner
This newsletter is getting ridiculously long, but oh well. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that a guilty pleasure of mine is that on Friday nights after the work week I read comics on my Kindle. This month I re-read Ultimate X-Men Volume 7: Blockbuster by Brian Michael Bendis because I remembered there was a bit in it when I read it years ago that I found really funny. It didn’t disappoint, and the same bit made me crack up when I read it again, so much that I had to share it. So here’s part of Ultimate Spider-Man meeting Ultimate Wolverine for one of the first times:
Hahahahahaha!
What I’ve been reading
Last month I needed an easy win, so I read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 5, aka Fritz Leiber’s THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR. I always forget how dense Leiber is and how much I have to concentrate, but he is also a wonderful stylist, and so funny. I really saw the influences on Pratchett and, in a different way, SKAVENSLAYER by William King, in this one—a story about reasoning rats trying to overrun the city of Lankhmar.
What Jo’s been reading
Yes, well predicted, last month Jo finished reading Jen Williams’ THE WINNOWING FLAME trilogy with THE POISON SONG. She said it was awesome. I still don’t know details because I might read it, but Jo says Williams basically just throws all the things she likes together into these books, like I do with SOTJ, and it’s brilliant. Recommended!
What I’ve been listening to
Last month I had another DNF, this time with an audiobook! Oh no! I picked up WILD CARDS 3, JOKERS WILD on audiobook because I read the first two books a while ago and loved them, but never managed to get into book 3. I noticed that this one has multiple different narrators for the different points of view, so I decided to give it a try. I had to stop for two reasons: 1. Some of the narrators are really bad. 2. Some of the sexual stuff in the book is really gross. Urgh. Nobody needs to hear that or read about it. This book took itself way too seriously, especially for fantasy-superhero fiction. 3. Having narrators for different POVs is actually rubbish when there are lots of POVs because they all read different character's’ voices differently which makes things hard to follow, and also sounds stupid.
Wait a minute…..that’s exactly what I am doing with the SOTJ season 2 podcast! Oh dear. I haven’t actually listened to all of SOTJ season 2 back in one go yet cause recording’s not finished, but if when I do it turns out to be crap like this audiobook, then I may need to rethink what I’m doing with it… Watch this space.
New episode of ongoing fantasy serial SAGA OF THE JEWELS
You made it! You got this far! As a reward, here’s the latest episode of SOTJ. Podcast is late again this month due to disorganization, yadda yadda yadda. I’m sorry. At least I know from my stats that lots of you are listening to it! More will come soon!
Previously on Saga of the Jewels…
The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. Ryn discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. He sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, and VISH the poppy-seed-addicted assassin. Together the adventurers decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the evil EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where they intend to compete in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament in order to attempt to win its grand prize, the EARTH EMERALD…
EPISODE THIRTY-FIVE: ACT TWO
One night before the tournament.
As soon as the red velvet curtain went down for the interval, Ryn turned to Nuthea from where he sat next to her and said, “What do you mean she’s Jewel-touched?”
He had tried to ask her while the play had been going on but it had been too difficult to talk in whispers without disturbing the people around them and making a scene–a different scene to the one happening on the stage, that is–so she had repeatedly shushed him, to his obvious frustration.
“What do you mean?” he pressed her again, now he had the opportunity. Everyone else around them was talking about the spectacle of the first half of the play they had just watched.
Nuthea brushed her hair out of her eyes. She felt slightly lightheaded. But she didn’t need to call the answer to mind. She had been going over and over it in her head ever since that lifelike dragon had appeared on stage.
“One of the Jewels…” she answered him, speaking quietly so that they wouldn’t be overheard, but not so quietly that Ryn couldn’t hear. “...the ‘Spirit Carnelian’...is supposed to grant the gift of being able to ‘summon’ creatures from the spirit realm… to give physical, animal shape to projections of spirit. Not very much is known about it, except that, and it’s thought that the Jewel has been lost for many thousands of years. There are very few mentions of spirit-projectors in the lore; you have to go back centuries to find even a single one, and even then the references are somewhat…mythical. Some argue that the Spirit Carnelian has never been found since the One hid it somewhere in Mid or that it doesn’t exist at all–”
“Well then how would anyone know about it?” Ryn butted in, interrupting her flow.
Nuthea frowned. He could be so annoying sometimes, speaking over her. “Well, these are ancient legends we are talking about, obviously. Their origins are shrouded in distant time. But we can trust the sacred texts of Oneism. They have been right about the other Jewels so far, after all...”
“So why do you think that actress has touched the ‘Spirit Carnelian’?”
“You saw that dragon, Ryn. It was real.”
“You don’t think it could have been some sort of stage trick, or made out of something else?”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” She had decided this while they had been watching the play.
“Alright then,” said Ryn, and stood up.
Nuthea grabbed his arm, horrified. “What are you doing?” He’s trying to be heroic, isn’t he? For my sake. Oh dear.
“You want to go and talk to her, don’t you?”
“Yes, but not now! If she is Jewel-touched, we will need to speak with her at length–ask her where she made contact with the Carnelian, whether she knows its present location, and so on...” Perhaps whether she even has it, Nuthea thought. “That will take some time, more than we will have during this interval, and if the second half of the play is delayed then we will cause a commotion and draw attention to ourselves. We should wait until the play has finished, then go and find her backstage.”
“Okay.” To her immense relief, Ryn sat down again.
They waited for the second half of the play to begin while the other members of the audience chattered excitedly around them, mainly about the dragon and how impressive it had been. From what Nuthea could overhear, the other audience members were convinced that it had been some sort of a trick, as nobody had been known to tame a real-life dragon before, at least in living memory.
Her attention drifted away from the chatter. If we do get to speak to this young lady, which we must, how will we convince her that we know about the Jewels?
Normally she would make a small display of her lightning projection, but there she faced the problem that she was still blocked for some reason, and her conversation with Cid hadn’t unblocked her. It had been nice to be distracted from all of that by the play, and then by the appearance of this spirit-summoning girl, and not to have to think about her lightning projection being blocked for a while.
Nuthea sighed. She would have to rely on Ryn again to make a display of his fire projection in order to convince the girl that they had knowledge of the Jewels, just as she had done when they had been trying to gain an audience with the Governor.
“Are you alright?” Ryn said to her, apparently having noticed her sighing.
“Hm?” said Nuthea. “Oh, yes, thank you, just thinking…”
She didn’t want to take advantage of Ryn, but it was very useful having him around for occasions such as this.
The trouble is, I don’t want to lead him on, either…
Was she leading him on? Why had she agreed to come to see a play with him? She had made it very clear that this wasn’t a signal of any kind of romantic interest. But then again, going to see a play with someone was quite an intimate activity in itself, regardless of what one called it…wasn’t it? And Sagar had been so rude to her; she had to admit that at least in part she had agreed to go with Ryn in order to spite the skypirate. That wasn’t really fair.
All of this would be a lot easier if she knew how she felt about Ryn.
The trouble was, she didn’t know how she really felt about him. He was her friend, for sure, and they had been through a lot together. They had already forgiven each other for a lot. And he was sweet, and sometimes charming, and sensitive. And handsome, in a youthful, boyish sort of way.
But it was just too confusing and muddled to contemplate anything like that so soon after…so soon after her mother’s death. She had enough to think about at the moment, what with that, and finding the Jewels, and being blocked…
Just then a clear bell rang from somewhere behind the curtain, signalling that the second act of the play was about to start.
When complete quiet had fallen on the audience and the last of its chatter had died away, the curtains came back up.
Zigfrid Alantherous was waiting behind them at centre stage in his finery, and immediately launched into a monologue about how he was going to find the Princess to rescue her from the Evil Dragon and save the kingdom which she represented.
Nuthea wasn’t able to pay proper attention to it. She hadn’t been able to pay proper attention to the plot of the play ever since the green-haired girl had come on and summoned the dragon. She let it wash over her, waiting for the next appearance of the green-haired girl, waiting for the end of the play when they would go and find her to talk to her, contemplating how she would explain their plight to her and wondering what sort of attitude the girl would respond with.
Eventually, the green-haired girl reappeared on the stage.
She ran on from stage left, with big, deliberate movements to unconvincingly communicate that she was tired; huffing and puffing and overacting.
This time the dragon followed her, its menacing green form pursuing her from offstage, powerful limbs pumping.
The girl turned, then swooned, putting the back of her hand to her forehead and letting out a bad excuse for a falsetto scream.
In response, the dragon reared its head and roared, opening its jaws to issue a plume of green flame into the air.
The audience gasped.
The dragon was more convincing in its acting than the girl was.
Now Zigfrid sauntered onto the stage too, sharing a scene with the girl for the first time.
The audience clapped.
“Fear not, Princess!” he declared. “Now that I have found thee I will save thee from this fell beast!”
He drew his fake sword–well, at least Nuthea assumed it was fake–and brandished it at the dragon, leaping forwards to do battle. Fortunately for him it didn’t simply breathe fire on him there and then and burn him to a cinder.
Somebody in the audience yelled.
Wait, why were they yelling?
Nuthea twisted round in her seat.
Other people were turning too, distracted even from the spectacle unfolding before them onstage.
At the back of the playhouse near the doors, someone was causing a commotion.
A flurry of irritated protests and shouting had started in reaction to it.
“Oi!”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Hey, I paid good money for this seat–get off me!”
Someone was stumbling over the rows of playhouse chairs clumsily, banging into people, knocking them over when they stood up to get out of their way, making all manner of fuss.
Someone with an eye-patch, a ponytail and a somewhat fetching high-collared coat.
Oh no.
“Prinshesh!” yelled Sagar. “Pup! We’ve gots to show you shomething!”
He was followed closely by purple-haired Elrann, and seemingly also with someone else in tow–a stranger in a grey cloak with their hood pulled up over their head, carrying a lute case and barely managing to keep out of harm’s way as Sagar dragged him by the hand across the playhouse audience towards them.
“What in the hells is he doing?” whispered Ryn.
Nuthea’s cheeks were hot. “Just pretend we don’t know him,” she said, turning back round and covering her face with a hand. She had enjoyed being anonymous, and not a princess from another land on a life-and-death save-the-world quest, for once this evening. That anonymity was potentially about to be ripped to shreds.
“Too late,” said Ryn. “He’s spotted us. Anyone would recognise that golden hair of yours a mile off.”
Sure enough, Sagar was making a beeline straight for them, Elrann and the hooded stranger following close behind. As he barged past people or stepped over them or just knocked into them they were yelling and shouting and swearing at him. There was nothing for it–the pirate had definitely seen her and Ryn.
“Prinshesh! Pup!” Sagar repeated when he finally reached them, a trail of cursing and irritated theatre-goers in his wake. His breath stank of alcohol. “I’ve got to tell you shomething! Thish man knowsh about the Jewelsh!”
“Sorry about this,” said Elrann a bit more quietly as she arrived next to him. She was red in the face, uncharacteristically flustered. “He got it into his head that he needed to talk to you straight away. I tried to stop him but he kept blowing me off. Er…literally……”
“Never mindsh that,” Sagar slurred. “Thish man! Thish man shang a shong about the Jewelsh!”
“What is he talking about?” said Nuthea to Elrann.
“Excuse me,” said a loud voice from behind them, “but how very dare you interrupt my play?”
They all looked up at the stage as quiet fell upon the playhouse once more.
Zigfrid Alanthereous stood with his hands on his hips, his brows knotted in a look of pure righteous fury. The green-haired girl didn’t seem to mind so much–she stood nearby, close-lipped and vacant, looking…bored even. The dragon appeared to be waiting patiently in place, perfectly still, for the interruption to be sorted out.
“Do you know how much work has gone into putting on this masterpiece of theatre?” Alantherous went on, still in a stage voice though he was presumably no longer reciting rehearsed lines. “How many times I’ve been over these words, perfecting them? How much craft has gone into the creation of this dragon?”
“Holy poodoo!” Sagar said in response. “There’sh a kufeing great dragon up there! THERE’SH A DRAGON UP THERE!” he broke into a shout. “SOMEONE’SH GOT TO SHTOP IT!”
Without further warning Sagar jumped up and called the wind to aid him, bashing into several of the audience members in front of them as he flew towards the stage.
He landed clumsily in front of the wide-eyed Alantherous, tripping over his own legs and hitting the stage with a roll, then crashed into the actor.
“Agh!” screamed the man-who-was-pretending-to-be-a-king, going down in a flutter of blue hair and clanging fake armour.
The green-haired girl backed away to one side of the stage, watching them, a bit more animated now. The dragon remained poised in place next to her.
Somehow Sagar made it to his feet first and drew his two swords, almost wounding both himself and Alantherous in the process.
“BACK, YOU FOUL BEASHT!” he screamed. “DEATH AND GLORY!”
He ran at the dragon, pulling his swords back to strike.
Nuthea looked on in horror as, on the stage in front of them, the dragon opened its long jaws and breathed bright green flames at Sagar.
The skycaptain yelped and jumped backwards, swinging his swords across his body on reflex and making a gust of wind blow the flames back before they could reach him.
“It’sh a fire breather!” he cried as the flames subsided. He turned his head to face the audience. “Ryn! Get up here, Ryn! We need your fire-powersh!”
Ryn had his head in hands.
“Go!” Nuthea said to him, thinking quickly. “You need to de-escalate this as fast as possible! I can’t help you because I’ve become blocked in my lightning projection. We need to calm this down so we can talk to that girl. Don’t tell anyone who I am or about our quest!”
Ryn took his hands away from his face and blinked with surprise, probably at the revelation that she was unable to cast lightning at present, but then regained his composure and nodded acknowledgment.
“Right,” he said, and dashed forwards, pushing past other audience members to get to the stage and Sagar.
Nuthea shook her head.
Boys. How can they be so stupid?
“Er”... said Elrann nearby. “Should we go after them?”
The engineer wore a wobbly grimace. Next to her stood the man in the hooded grey cloak that she and Sagar had brought in with them. He had dark skin and sparkling deep blue eyes, like the ocean reflecting sunlight.
“Hey lady!” a man in the row behind them yelled at Elrann and the man all of a sudden. “Guy! Sit down! We’re trying to watch the play!”
“Yeah!” said someone else. “This is great! I didn’t realise they were going to use stooges planted in the audience!”
They think this is part of the play, Nuthea realised.
She quickly scooted up in her chair and pulled Elrann down by the hand to sit next to her in Ryn’s old seat. The mysterious new stranger followed suit, taking off his lute case and placing it on the floor in front of them, sitting down next to Elrann so that they squeezed in, three people to two chairs.
“No, we don’t go after them,” Nuthea whispered to Elrann, her eyes on the stage. Ryn had reached it, and leaped up onto it to join Sagar, the green-haired girl and Zigfrid. “At least not yet. I don’t want to give away that I am here in Farr. News will travel fast, and it’s too dangerous. The Empire cannot know of my whereabouts. And we need to keep an eye on that green-haired actress. I think she’s Jewel-touched. Depending on how this goes, we may need to go after her once the play is finished.”
“Oh right; I see,” said Elrann. “Alrighty then. Let’s see what happens. This is Quel, by the way.” She gestured with a thumb towards the hooded stranger.
“Hello, Quel,” Nuthea said to him.
“Hello, miss,” said Quel in an Umbarian accent. He gave a little wave from his side of Elrann.
“I am sure you have a good reason for bringing him along,” Nuthea said to the engineer, “and that you will explain everything once this fiasco is over?”
“Yep!” Elrann smiled. “Sure do, and sure will!”
“Alright then,” said Nuthea. “Keep an eye on the green-haired girl, like I said.”
“Okeydokey.”
With that, she sat back in her chair and watched utter carnage unfold in front of her.
*
Ryn landed on the wooden stage with a thump, extinguishing the flames around his feet just in time to avoid setting it on fire. His knees absorbed the shock as two little stabs of pain.
“Sagar!” he tried calling again. “What in the name of the One are you doing? Get off the stage!”
Sagar had his swords out and was waving them around haphazardly in front of the huge green dragon, so obviously drunk it hurt to look at him. He twisted around to address Ryn.
“Whadyou mean, pup?” he slurred indignantly, almost falling over from the twist. “Theresh a bloody great dragon here! We need to kill it before it eatsh the prinshesh! Death and glory, you know?”
He continued round into a full turn and threw a clumsy swipe at the dragon, which merely took a step backwards, but also bared its teeth and growled, black smoke issuing from its nostrils.
A little way away the green-haired girl stood wide-eyed and pale with her mouth open, fists in tight balls. She looked as though she had absolutely no idea what to do.
“What do you think you are doing, you insolent wretches?” the lead actor, Zigfrid, shouted at them from his own place on the stage. “How dare you interrupt my great debut Farrian performance! Get off, both of you, now, or I will have Riss here set the drake on you!”
“Er, I’m sorry, sir…” Ryn fumbled his words. “My friend here–”
“Whadyou mean ‘what are we doing’?” said Sagar, turning on the actor and swaying slightly in place. He pointed behind him with his sword. “Hash everyone gone blind? There’sh a kufeing great dragon here to be shlain!”
“That dragon is a part of my magnum opus!” said Zigfrid, quivering with anger. “The magnum opus which you are interrupting and ruining!”
“Your magnet wha’?” said Sagar.
“The play, you fool! My great work! The dragon is part of the show! It won’t hurt you! Now get off my stage or I will hurt you! If you don’t get off now and stop interrupting my play I will run you through, you drunken fool! This sword is real, you know!” The armoured actor rattled the blade that hung from a belt at his side.
Sagar’s eyes bulged. “A challenge!” He lifted his sword up and pointed it at Zigfrid. “You musht be in kahootsh with the dragon! I will shlay you too if I musht!”
“Sagar, don’t–” started Ryn, holding up his hands.
“Ahwoooooo!” howled Sagar, rushing forwards.
Zigfrid spread his feet and drew his own blade even as Sagar reached him.
One, two, three clangs, and their blades locked in front of them, each of them staring into the face of the other.
Wow, thought Ryn. Not bad. He can handle a sword. Or at least, he can handle a drunk Sagar.
Sagar seemed surprised too, from the fact that he didn’t react right away. But then he made a pushing motion with his free hand and wind gusted into Zigfrid, sending him tumbling heels-over-head back across the stage.
The audience whooped.
Ryn turned to look at them.
They were actually cheering and applauding, almost all of them. One large man in the front row was practically falling out of his seat with excitement. A good number of rows back, he spotted golden hair. Nuthea. Her mouth was tight line and her head was tilted down slightly. She stared daggers at him from across the theatre. End this now, her stare seemed to say.
“Godsdammit!” swore Zigfird, clambering to his feet with a clanking of tin armour over on the far side of the stage where Sagar had gusted him to. He had dropped his sword and lost his crown somewhere on the way over. “Nobody upstages Zigfrid Alanthreonusson! I don’t know how you did that, but you’ve forced me to do this, you rampaging plebian!”
The actor flicked back his blue hair, then thrust forward two hands, palms outstretched.
“LEO!” Zigfrid yelled, loud and theatrically.
There was a flash of light, and an enormous blue lion appeared on the stage in front of him, complete with a flowing mane.
Ryn blinked in shock.
He had seen pictures of lions in books, but he didn’t think they were meant to be as big as this. It was nearly the same size as the dragon on the other side of the stage.
It had very pale blue-tinged fur, almost white, but its thick, rugged mane was a deeper, royal sort of blue. Its facial features were almost human, but for the feline nose, Ryn could see from the other side of the stage near Sagar. Like the dragon, its big black eyes had a personality to them.
It crouched low now, terrible strength gathering in the bulging muscles of its legs, tensing its huge clawed paws, scratching the stage.
How is this happening? Ryn wondered. Then he realised. The Spirit Carnelian that Nuthea mentioned. Zigfrid must be Jewel-touched too! He’s summoned a spirit!
Sagar’s forehead contorted into a skew-whiff frown.
“LEO, KILL!” shouted Zigfrid.
The lion roared, bass and brutal, and pounced at Sagar.
“No!” Ryn called out at the same time as someone else.
The dragon sprang towards Sagar too from the other direction and smacked him to one side with a clawed leg.
The skypirate tumbled over the edge of the stage, bounced on the floor, rolled a couple of times and landed on his back at the feet of the front row.
The audience went wild. The large man in the front row, whom Sagar had landed in front of, seemed to almost be wetting himself with excitement.
Two inhuman roars echoed through the theatre.
Ryn looked back round.
The massive blue lion was standing up on its hind legs, its paws locked against the clawed feet of the dragon. It snapped at the dragon’s neck, but the dragon drew back its head, then darted in to bite at the face of the lion itself, who backed off in turn. The two of them wrestled and writhed, roaring and snapping at each other, trying to land a bite on the other’s body.
The animals broke apart and crouched a few paces away from one another, panting and growling from their bout.
“Riss!” shouted Zigfrid across the stage, radiating fury. “How dare you combat my summon with your own to defend that barbarian?!”
“You were going to kill him!” the girl yelled back in a horrified voice, the first thing that Ryn had heard her say since he had been up onstage. “He didn’t deserve that!”
Zigfrid shook with fury. “Disrespect! You will be disciplined for this, child, make no mistake! Leo, put down that dragon!”
The lion crouched low once more to pounce.
Ryn had very little idea what was going on, but he knew whose side he was on.
As the lion leapt to attack again, Ryn put out his hands and shouted “FIRE!”
Flames blossomed from his hands and rushed over the lion.
It stopped in its tracks immediately, shrinking back and covering its face with its paws, making a mewling, whining sound.
Ryn ceased the flames.
He had scorched the lion’s fur brown and black. Guilt pulled at his guts immediately. But it had been about to hurt the dragon, and possibly the girl, hadn’t it? And it’s just a spirit. Isn’t it?
“What deviltry is this?” said Zigfrid, then promptly fainted. He keeled over backwards and hit the stage with a smack. The blue lion disappeared at once.
The audience went crazy. They gave a standing ovation, almost all of them getting to their feet, holding up their hands, clapping and hollering so that the noise of their praise filled the theatre.
“You can project fire?” said the girl over the din, staring at Ryn across the stage, eyes like two green-tinted full moons.
“Er, yes,” Ryn said simply.
The girl nodded, and something in her eyes seemed to betray a decision. “Please, quick, follow me!”
The girl ran off the stage, past the curtain which hung to one side of it, then down some steps that led from the backstage area to a door.
Ryn sprinted after her, got halfway down the steps, then remembered.
“Wait a second!” he called after the girl. “I just need to get something!”
He turned and ran back onstage, where Sagar, having somehow managed to sheathe his swords and climb back up even in his drunkenness, was beaming at the applauding crowd, waving at them, and taking bows as they whistled and hollered and cheered.
“Come on, Sagar!” Ryn grabbed his hand and yanked him off the stage, back down the steps and through the door after the green-haired girl.
“They love me!” Sagar declared as Ryn pulled him along. “They love me!”
The stage door banged shut behind them.
-
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