The world is dying.
The Sunset Lands are broken, torn apart by a war of ideology paid for with the lives of the peasants. Drought holds the east as famine ravages the farmlands. In the west, borders slam shut in the face of waves of refugees, dooming all of those trying to flee to slow starvation, or a future in forced labor camps. There is no salvation.
In the city of Lord’s Reach, Seraphina, a slave with unique talents, sets in motion a series of events that will change everything. In a fight for the soul of the nation, everyone is a player. But something ominous is calling people to Lord’s Reach and the very nature of magic itself is changing. Paths will converge, the battle for the Sunset Lands has shifted, and now humanity itself is at stake.
First, you must break before you can become.
Read more: Seraphina's Lament - Sarah Chorn
Review: The Big-Headed People and Other Stories by D. F. Lewis
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
D. F. Lewis' The Big-Headed People and Other Stories was published by Eibonvale Press in December 2017.
Information about D. F. Lewis:
The Three Ages of D. F. Lewis (1948 - )
1. 1986-2000 – Over 1000 fiction publications in magazines and anthologies, culminating in the Prime Books Weirdmonger collection.
2. 2001-2010 – Publishing Nemonymous journal of fiction.
3. 2008 to date – Gestalt real-time reviews. (Plus one novel entitled Nemonymous Night, a collection, four novellas that were independently published and three originally created multi-authored anthologies.)
Click here to visit the The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews website.
Information about The Big-Headed People and Other Stories:
“The story missed a beat. It was sad. It never knew it could create such utter truth from such utter fantasy.”
These stories of D. F. Lewis are deeply rooted in both horror and dreams, yet told in a way that maybe comes closest to ‘outsider art’. These works are dreamlike in a true sense of the term, capturing that feeling of portentous yet seemingly random shifts in narrative, state and environment with complete ease. The results are both subtly unnerving in ways few horror stories manage and also demonstrate the author’s unique writing style.
This collection includes an expanded version of the title story plus four smaller pieces.
REVIEW: THE BIG-HEADED PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES BY D. F. LEWIS
Read more: Review: The Big-Headed People and Other Stories by D. F. Lewis
Review: Daughters of Apostasy by Damian Murphy
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Damian Murphy's Daughters of Apostasy was published by Snuggly Books in September 2017.
Information about Damian Murphy:
Damian Murphy is the author of The Academy Outside of Ingolstadt, Seduction of the Golden Pheasant, and The Exaltation of the Minotaur, among other collections and novellas. His work has been published on the Mount Abraxas, Les Éditions de L’Oubli, and L’Homme Récent imprints of Ex Occidente Press, in Bucharest, and by Zagava Books, in Dusseldorf. He was born and lives in Seattle, Washington.
Information about Daughters of Apostasy:
An act of trespass, the subtle topology of an opulent hotel, a lengthy composition involving an exiled abbess, a letter mailed to an unknown recipient, a border station concealed by inexplicable winds, an antiquated electronic game, a rite of passage modulated by a metronome, a Gnostic heresy, a ruined church, an employee engaged in illicit acts of passion: by these and several other devices to the daughters of apostasy seek to irritate the vessels of the earth. Strange wine may be distilled thereby, and thus might the obsessive aspirant perceive the tenets of a hidden doctrine.
In these five stories and novellas, the intrigues and stratagems of interlopers, initiates, poets, and bibliophiles are revealed in all of their illicit splendor. By way of complex and labyrinthine routes do they come to obtain impossible relics not known even among the kings of the earth.
REVIEW: DAUGHTERS OF APOSTASY BY DAMIAN MURPHY
Read more: Review: Daughters of Apostasy by Damian Murphy
Guest post about Seraphina's Lament by Sarah Chorn
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Guest Post
Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a guest post by the debut author Sarah Chorn.
About Sarah Chorn:
Sarah has been a compulsive reader her whole life. At a young age, she found her reading niche in the fantastic genre of Speculative Fiction. She blames her active imagination for the hobbies that threaten to consume her life. She is a writer and editor, a semi-pro nature photographer, world traveler, three-time cancer survivor, and mom. In her ideal world, she’d do nothing but drink lots of tea and read from a never-ending pile of speculative fiction books. You can visit her website at www.bookwormblues.net
About Seraphina's Lament:
The world is dying.
The Sunset Lands are broken, torn apart by a war of ideology paid for with the lives of the peasants. Drought holds the east as famine ravages the farmlands. In the west, borders slam shut in the face of waves of refugees, dooming all of those trying to flee to slow starvation, or a future in forced labor camps. There is no salvation.
In the city of Lord’s Reach, Seraphina, a slave with unique talents, sets in motion a series of events that will change everything. In a fight for the soul of the nation, everyone is a player. But something ominous is calling people to Lord’s Reach and the very nature of magic itself is changing. Paths will converge, the battle for the Sunset Lands has shifted, and now humanity itself is at stake.
First, you must break before you can become.
Publishing date: February 19th, 2019.
Links:
Guest post about Seraphina's Lament by Sarah Chorn
Read more: Guest post about Seraphina's Lament by Sarah Chorn
Review: How Many Times? by Rhys Hughes
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Rhys Hughes' How Many Times? was published by Eibonvale Press in March 2018.
Information about Rhys Hughes:
Rhys Hughes was born in 1966. Tartarus Press published his first collection, Worming the Harpy, in 1995, and since that time he has published more than thirty other books. His fiction is generally fantastical and his output mainly consists of short stories, though he has published several novels. His work is frequently compared to that of Boris Vian, Flann O'Brien and R.A. Lafferty, but he cites his major influences as Italo Calvino and Donald Barthelme. His three most recent books are the collections Bone Idle in the Charnel House (Hippocampus Press), Orpheus on the Underground (Tartarus Press) and Brutal Pantomimes (Egaeus Press). Fascinated by paradoxes, he incorporates them into his fiction as entertainingly as he can. Sangria in the Sangraal was inspired by a real visit to the town of Albarracín in the year 2007.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about How Many Times?:
Rhys Hughes has never been a stranger to experimental fiction and unusual ways of constructing stories, and this mini-collection gathers some of his most far-reaching examples, placed squarely in the world of OuLiPo writing. Short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle or the workshop of potential literature, OuLiPo is a grouping of authors who fashion works based on constrained writing techniques - writing that follows rigorous and extremely precise rules concerning structure and layout etc. And here, we encounter works based on rigid numerical constraints, works in the form of grids that can be read in any direction, and a "logico-erotic tale in which the permutations of the sexual acts are based on the workings of logic gates."
The intricacy of construction within these carefully defined restraints is stunning but the resulting literary world is still very much the author’s own, filled with his characteristic sense of humour, the absurd and the fantastical.
This is a slim but large-format book to give space for all the complex layouts, grids, structures etc. that make up these stories.
REVIEW: HOW MANY TIMES? BY RHYS HUGHES
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Review: James Clyde and the Tomb of Salvation by Colm McElwain
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Colm McElwain's James Clyde and the Tomb of Salvation was published in November 2018.
Information about Colm McElwain:
Colm was raised and educated in Monaghan, Ireland. He is a Physical Education and Business teacher and likes reading books, watching films and playing sport. He has always loved storytelling, whether through literature or film. James Clyde and the Diamonds of Orchestra is his first novel and brings a very fulfilling creative experience spanning a number of years to an end. James Clyde and the Tomb of Salvation is his second novel.
Information about James Clyde and the Tomb of Salvation:
Picking up shortly after the events of the first adventure, James Clyde returns with his best friends Ben and Mary Forester to his grandfather’s house in search of a map that will lead them to the Tomb of Salvation – an ancient shrine, where the three diamonds of Orchestra must be returned with the promise of immortality.
James and his company of adventurers journey through treacherous lands fraught with danger and meet many obstacles along the way – dangerous assassins on board a train, the dastardly Gilbert, also known as the ‘man in black’, and even an unlikely encounter with a fabled lake monster.
If they reach the Tomb of Salvation, James knows they will then face their greatest threat, for the tomb is said to be home to a terrifying demon – an entity that has shown no mercy to anyone who has ever entered its lair.
The second novel in the James Clyde series will lead you on an action-packed adventure full of mystery, suspense, danger, hope – and, yes, salvation.
REVIEW: JAMES CLYDE AND THE TOMB OF SALVATION BY COLM MCELWAIN
Read more: Review: James Clyde and the Tomb of Salvation by Colm McElwain