Darkness Rising - Redemption #epicfantasy

Darkness Rising - Redemption available on Amazon

Ross Kitson, fantasy author extraordinaire, has just published part 6 of the Darkness Rising series. Part SIX! If you've been keeping tabs on the series, each book fits into a large scheme of plot, characters, and perhaps the most amazing world-building I've ever seen.

Have a look at some of the adventure and battle coming your way in his new book:

'There's no change without loss. No gain without sacrifice. Redemption is rarely painless.'

War has ripped apart Artoria as the dark forces of Vildor prepare for the final battle. Flying north to battle, Lady Orla forms an uneasy alliance with the Artorians. Yet her heart remains heavy with the guilt of recent betrayal.

In the wilderness of the Wastes, Emelia has succumbed to Vildor's black charm and watches helplessly as his schemes come to their terrible conclusion. Separated from his partner, Hunor, the Wild-Mage Jem races across Artoria to save Emelia. But more than just Vildor stands in his way as the terrors of the past seek to steal the might of the crystals from his grasp, and with them all hope of salvation.

The final book in the epic fantasy series, Darkness Rising- Redemption brings the incredible journey to its thrilling conclusion.

Take a look at Kitson's reviews:

'Tightly plotted, very well-written books, with a multitude of engaging characters.'  The British Fantasy Society

'Each page is a new rush of tension, mystery and adrenaline.' Amazon reviews.

'A finely crafted and unique fantasy novel which had me hooked from the first page.' Amazon reviews.

You can buy Darkness Rising - Redemption on Amazon US and UK. 

Ross M Kitson works during the day as a consultant in Intensive Care and Anaesthesia in the UK. He is married with three lovely children who soak up most of his free time. His works include the Prism series of epic fantasy, and the YA sci-fi adventures of the Nu-Knights.

images courtesy of wikipedia.org

#CoverReveal for Darkness Rising 5 by Ross Kitson

Besides being a great guy, Ross Kitson is a serious talent on many fronts. His writing is incredible, and he also creates detailed maps that take my breath away. (I'll freely admit here I'm a Map Ho.)

You can see both in his Darkness Rising series, a must-read for any epic fantasy fan. I love the books because they have real characters, heart-pounding action, and constant surprises that keep me turning the pages to read more.

Here is the cover for the latest installment, Darkness Rising (Book 5: Broken):

PS - The cover was created by Ceri Clark, who has been on hand to do each book for Ross. She's always amazing, and I think she outdid herself here with Broken.

And here is the blurb for Broken:

'Beneath the veneer, beneath the beauty, there is always the coldness of stone.’ 

Tragedy has torn apart Emelia and her companions, a terrible betrayal instigated by the Darkmaster, Vildor. A devastated Jem struggles to control the fearful power of the crystals, becoming distant from his closest friends. Hunor and Orla are tested by a secret from the past, a revelation that will change everything between them. In the Dead City, Emelia begins a search for her past, a journey that will plunge her deeper into the darkness of Vildor and his twisted schemes.

Desperate to seek aid in their battle against Vildor, the companions travel north to Belgo, capital of North Artoria. But everything is not what it seems in the palace, and danger lurks in every shadow, whether cast by friend or foe. 

Separated and alone, can Emelia, Jem and Hunor hope to prevail? Or will the evils of the present and 
the past overcome them at last?

Darkness Rising 5 – Broken is the fifth in the epic fantasy series that reviewers are calling ‘epic and 
spellbinding.’ It is a must read for fantasy fans the world over. 

The Beauty of Damaged

In the shower, where I get most of my important thinking done (memo - must get Shower Notes) I started to muse about how beautiful damaged people can be. 

Damage itself is very ugly, and of course I wouldn't wish trauma or sadness on anyone. What some people go through, either as kids or adults, can be terrifying even to contemplate.

However, the pain can be a type of bridge, almost a gift, to lead a personality from a basic, settled view of life to a new set of visions - perhaps that life is incredibly precious. Perhaps the damaged people get, more than anyone, the realization that nothing is more important than the people you love, and from the depths of agony, courage and strength can arise. 

In fiction and in film, I've always been "caught" by certain characters, by what their hideous pasts have done to them. Sometimes the pain makes them badass, sometimes they are in therapy or worse, or trapped in a long spiral down.

Yes, the spiral is fascinating, and I don't say this as a sadist. I repeat - I would never wish trauma on anyone. But to see a character spin out of control - it's a lovely dance...

ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE OFFERED REDEMPTION.

That's the key. An endless descent becomes a VH1 "Behind the Music" special - you know what's going to happen - wealth, fame, and the onslaught of drink, drugs, insanity.

But if there is the possibility of escaping the spiral - an incredibly difficult act to accomplish, and one I do not take lightly - at that moment, I'm hooked. I love when Butch and Marcellus create their own 'honor among thieves' code of conduct. Ditto the friendship which elevates Andy Dufreyne and 'Red' Redding.

The downward / redemption concept captured me in Wool, in the Sherlock Holmes BBC series, in The Fault in Our Stars. 

Hazel Grace by spockward on deviant art

In the last one, Hazel Grace and Augustus are damaged by a dreadful thing beyond their control - the evil villain known collectively as Cancer. Bring two damaged people together and watch them find beauty and redemption - yeah, I read that book twice. And I'll read it again.

It's what sucked me into Darkness Rising, books 1,2,3 and now 4. It hooked me in The Lord of the Rings - the horrifying darkness surrounding Gollum and how (SPOILER ALERT, AND FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THE BOOKS) he is the key at the end to deliverance.

Son, that downward spiral has just begun.

I don't mean to belittle those who have had perfect lives, happy childhoods, plentiful friends, fantastic careers. If this describes you, receive my congratulations and a hearty handclasp! 

But, as I say, in fiction and in film and also in real life, those damaged people can be very beautiful. Their eyes are hooded with secret knowledge. Complex passageways are carved through their thoughts. They are careful with their own words, so they do not betray themselves.

They are human: scarred, tattooed, wounded.

They are beautiful.

Alternative Reality in TV and Film

Today's blog is a guest post from Ross Kitson, the author of the Darkness Rising series and a new steampunk book, The Infinity Bridge. (I've read all of his books, and they are fantastic.)

This is a continuation from his guest post from yesterday about books, posted on Life in the Realm of Fantasy. It will continue on Ross's own blog tomorrow and address alternative realities in comics here - http://rossmkitson.blogspot.co.uk

A central premise of my latest book, The Infinity Bridge, is the existence of parallel worlds and alternate reality. In the book these are classified as historical, physical and biological variants. The first is obvious, the second is an idea that a parallel world could, for example, have different physical laws—say magic exists (in a Narnia alternate world type way). The third is the idea that we could have evolved down a different path, or that perhaps dinosaurs became the dominant evolutionary species.

The possibilities are endless, and for a writer that holds a major appeal for me. I’ve been fascinated by the topic for as long as I can remember, and although I first found it in super-hero comics, it was in television that it really ingrained itself in me.

Although the idea of alternate realities and parallel worlds was well established in the pulp sci-fi of the forties and fifties I think the stage where it became soldered as a concept in our brains was when it slipped from the yellowed pages of literature and into the Technicolor glory of TV and Film.

I could go on about the Twilight Zone first of, but as I’m only just past 40 it’d be wrong of me to claim any real interest or memory of the show. Yeah, I know it was uber-cool, perhaps more so in retrospect, and it paved the way for so much... but I want to start with the two greatest sci-fi series on the box: Star Trek and Dr Who.

I am evil Kirk!!!!!

With due apology to my national loyalties, its really Star Trek that I remember as a kid for first showing me the alternate reality story line. It was a basic idea in Trek that anything was possible with an ion-storm and a dodgy transporter. In the seminal ‘Mirror, mirror’ our hero James T Kirk is flipped into a parallel world, along with Scotty, Uhura and McCoy. This alternate world had an evil version of the Enterprise crew, with agoniser booths and assassination attempts. And the evil Kirk is noticeable in our own reality by his dark eye make-up (there was another great one, The Enemy Within, where Kirk is split into bad Kirk and good Kirk by the transporter... that was a cracker too!!).

I loved that episode and, in the era of Star Trek syndication, watched it again and again on BBC2 when it repeated. Less repeated, but none the less a significant impact on my TV watching childhood, was Dr Who.

Dr Who had many alternate reality and parallel world stories. One that bore a significant resemblance to Mirror, mirror was the 3rd Doctor story ‘Inferno.’ Here a TARDIS malfunction sends Jon Pertwee’s doctor into a reality where the country is run as a fascist state (some would joke it’s not that alternate) and there are evil counterparts to his friends and companions. The idea re-surged again in the 7^th Doctor’s story Battlefield, and more recently the 9^th Doctor’s Rise of the Cybermen. One which derives from other TV and film concepts, was the Tenth Doctor story, Turn Left. The entire premise is based on the idea that if the Doctor’s companion, Donna, had made a different choice before she first met the Doctor, then what would be the ramifications on her world, the other companions etc. The writer Russel T Davies drew on themes from films such as It’s A Wonderful Life and Sliding Doors, that alternate realities that are created by individual decisions going two different ways, can have significant impacts on others.

It’s A Wonderful Life is a seminal Christmas movie, starring Jimmy Stewart, in which Stewart is visited by his guardian angel at a point where he considers suicide, and is shown the alternate reality in which he never existed and the impact that would have on his small town.

MCFLY!!!!!!

I’d seen the film on the TV a few times as a child, but for me the greatest alternate history style film was Back to the Future. It’s not strictly one, I know, but I adored that film as a kid. The first film gives us a clue what would happen to the present if Marty failed to get his parents together, and also what then happened when his dad stood up to Biff when he assaulted Lorraine. The alternate reality idea really got pushed in the second film of the series, which was a bit of a let-down for me, although still good fun. In this we see a dystopian present existing as a consequence of Biff’s meddling with time.

Dystopia is a popular theme in alternate history and parallel realities in the TV/Film genre. This is best exampled by Fringe, which started off as a sort of X-files style show and then went really whacky! I love Fringe, mainly because its lead characters are so awesome (especially Walter Bishop), but it went a little off-track in the fourth series.

Fringe tackles both parallel universes and alternate timelines. The premise of season 2’s finale onwards was that there was a parallel world with a few key historical and scientific differences that exists adjacent to ours, and that Walter learned how to cross and kidnap the counterpart of his deceased son (who had survived an illness in the other world). The ramifications for both worlds are huge, and in the parallel world result in widespread devastation and instability.

Your own Fringe Decoder, courtesy of Science Discovery

In the fourth season it got bonkers when Peter, Walter’s son, is thrown into an alternate history wherein he didn’t survive childhood and as a consequence history is different. The relationships between the two parallel worlds are altered, as are the characters.

The alternate reality in films and TV has progressed now from the staples of sci-fi into more mainstream and innovative series. I’m yet to watch it, but someone at work was raving about the series Awake. In this Jason Issac plays a cop who is involved in a car crash. In one reality his wife survives, in another his son. He flips between the two realities, which he distinguishes by wearing a coloured wristband, when he goes to sleep and wakes again. He uses information from one reality to help in the other when solving crime.

It’s a brave concept, although I think perhaps too radical as the series only made one season. It does illustrate that the idea of alternate reality and alternate history isn’t just in the SF realm, and that the alternates don’t have to played on a world-wide scale to make good drama. Rather the more interesting ones are when we look at the impacts of decisions on a character based level, and in their relationships and development.

So, finally, I go back to the media that first got me excited about alternate reality... the world of comics.

Favorite Book of Favorite Series - Day 4

Yesterday I picked out my favorite series, trad pub and Indie. They were, respectively, Harry Potter and the Darkness Rising books.

Today I'm choosing my favorite books in the series. Easy!

For Harry, the Order of the Phoenix was, without a doubt, my favorite. It was the longest book, and for a reason - Harry entered adolescence and became a bit of a pill, in a completely natural way. After all, he had a rough start, so it would have been unbelievable if he was all sweetness and light. No cut-out Victorian heroes for JK!

I loved the secret Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, the ongoing arguments between Hermione and Ron who were already acting like an old married couple, and the Order of the Phoenix itself. But the crowning achievement was Umbridge. She was so nasty and horrible she was nearly unbelievable - except I've worked with her, in my former life as a teacher. Yes, I was an a faculty with Umbridge, and very annoying it was, too.

As for the Darkness Rising series, Book Two: Quest was my favorite. Kitson really seemed to hit his stride with his characters and writing. There was one scene that blew me away, as death and horror fills a town, the villagers sing a long song about a Silver Lady. It is reminiscent of Tolkien at his best.

(By the way, Kitson just received a glowing review for the series at the British Fantasy Society, here.)

Now, what is your favorite series? And the favorite book in it?

30 Days of Books - My Favorite Series

The Frabjous wonder of a good series - of reading a book, knowing that more will follow with the same characters and fantastic writing. 

Of course Harry Potter comes to mind instantly, as well as Moomins, Tolkien - starting with The Hobbit of course - and the Dido Twite books. In each series, an adventure happens and ends rather satisfactorily at the end. JK Rowling and Tolkien went one step further and introduced a common thread, a continuing siege or adventure that kept readers returning for more. 

Kill Voldemort! 

Destroy the Ring! 

Still, each volume of the series is, of itself, a good read with a beginning, middle, and an end.

Trust me, as an author of a series, this is a very hard thing to accomplish. You want the readers to be able to pick up any book and begin to read, but usually you really have to start at the beginning.

Of the above, for sheer genius in creating compelling story arcs and likable, living characters, I must go with JK. When I started The Deathly Hallows, I thought there was no WAY she could resolve every issue, especially with all those Horcruxes to be destroyed. Yet, resolve them she did. The woman is a goddess.

On the Indie front, my favorite series is Darkness Rising by Ross Kitson. Emelia is the main character, and she begins as a lowly servant in a castle. Soon she is propelled into a series of adventures, and she discovers hidden resources of strength and bravery.

It's all very epic and fantastic. Kitson makes Emelia spring to life right from the start. He has done a lot of world building; like JK Rowling, his universe (Nurolia) has been imagined with maps, languages, and characters. Kitson, a doctor in the UK, painstakingly illustrates them all, so the book is a journey through an imaginary country. 

And - joy! Kitson has just started another series, called Infinity Bridge. This one is a steampunk read, with loads of urban fantasy. I devoured the first book and can't wait for the next. 

And then there are those books that SHOULD be a series but are not .... cough ... Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell ... we are still waiting...

The Next Big Thing

I was tagged to do The Next Thing by Coral Russell, the lovely author and blogger at Alchemy of Scrawl. We are doing The Next Best Thing, which is ten question about a WIP.

What is the working title of your book?

The last book in the Crown Phoenix series is called The South Sea Bubble.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I already had my story in place from the previous book, but I started to obsess about bathyspheres and postboxes. I played around with those ideas and came up with the framework for the book.

What genre does your book fall under?

Steampunk, but my books are set in the Edwardian era, not the Victorian age. My stories have loads of adventure and a little bit of romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

My beautiful, magical governess, Mana, becomes the Queen of Lampala. Zoe Saldana would be perfect for that role. As for the rest of the cast, I'd love for some unknown young actors to pick up the roles of Miriam, Simon, Lizzie, and Ninna.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Lizzie and Ninna learn how to be nurses in a hospital where mysterious things happen at night.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book is published through Myrddin Publishing, an author collective.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I suppose it's a bit like Hugo. My real influence, however, was Enid Blyton. She's dated, especially in her world views, but my goodness that woman could create great adventure stories.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

Enid, as I said. I was also inspired by the music of Angelique Kidjo, a wonderful singer from the country of Benin. In fact, I based the language in the book on some of her lyrics.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Hmmm... if you like antique machines mixed with quantum physics, as well as adventure and Edwardian characters, you might give my series a try. It should be ready to purchase in September.

Now I'm tagging these excellent authors:

Shaun Allan

Joan Hazel
Ross Kitson
Kate Barker
Krista Hatch

So Many books, So Little Time

In the comment section of my Avatar post, someone suggested the Allie's War series. Dedicated reader that I am, I dashed right over and checked out the series. Yup, it looks fantastic. And there are loads of books by the author. And I want them all.

Here's my reading list, should I win a zillion dollars and get to buy all the Kindle copies I want:

1. That Allie's War series. "Twenty-eight-year-old San Francisco native, Allie Taylor, at least thought she was human. Against a gritty and original backdrop of a modern-day Earth populated by a second race of beings, Allie finds out she's a member of an enslaved yet deeply powerful race, whose members believe her to be their most venerated leader, come to end the reign of humanity." Interesting!

2. Anything by Neil Stephenson. I'm deep into Quicksilver right now, with Cryptonomicon on deck. Quicksilver is  about "an explosive scientific battle of preeminence between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the development of calculus." Calculus? A battle between mathematicians? I'm there. (I can read about it, just can't understand it.)

3. Gideon the Cutpurse series. I love the cover and I've had a few friends tell me the books are incredible. "Gideon Seymour, cutpurse and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly the sky peels away like fabric and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children. Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine. Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine -- and Kate and Peter's only chance of getting home. Soon Gideon, Kate, and Peter are swept into a journey through eighteenth-century London and form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery." Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!

Love that cover.

4. For my epic fantasy side, Darkness Rising by Ross Kitson. He  got me right from the start with his description of the heroine, Emelia. Plus, his world building is incredible. I'm a fool for maps, and that book has great maps. "Emelia is trapped in servitude to uncaring and haughty masters. When tragedy strikes, strange powers emerge within her - powers of the Wild-magic, sorcery reviled by the elemental orders. Escaping from her masters, Emelia embarks upon an epic adventure to find the Prisms and defeat the lord of the ghasts. Only she holds the key to their location but the Wild-magic comes at a dire cost...that of her mind."

Holding out for the Anti-Hero

Ross Kitson is in the house! He is the author of Dreams of Darkness Rising, the first volume of an incredible epic fantasy that I just can't wait to read.  I've read his short stories, and they are amazing, and plus his book has MAPS. I'm a sucker for a map in a book, ever since Lord of the Rings.

One of the maps from Dreams of  Darkness Rising

Ross works during the day as a consultant in Intensive Care and Anaesthesia at Tameside Hospital in Manchester. He is married with three lovely kids who soak up most of his free time. He writes his epic tales in the wee hours augmented with a combination of stella and red wine.

My genre is fantasy. I love it; have always loved it, ever since I could read. As a kid I was captivated by the total escapism of fantasy, by the idea of magic being a reality, by the virtues of the heroic struggling against insurmountable evils. It was a passion fueled by an adolescence dedicated to role playing games, tucked away in mates’ sheds and front rooms, for far too many hours until my complexion emulated Gollum on a bad-skin day.

So here’s a quandary. Given that many of us who read fantasy and sci-fi and all its sub-sub genres (Elfpunk anyone?) came into the genre loving tales of the great and good defeating the gibbering armies of The Dark ^Tm , how come the anti-hero is so pervasive in speculative fiction?

They’re everywhere! Take the most successful fantasy series of the last ten years—George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire—it is replete with anti-heroes. Tyrion Lannister has to be the favourite character amongst a sea of schemers and blaggards. He’s selfish, rude, corrupt, bitter, in fact all the traits that make a great bad guy. Yet amongst his venom there are redeeming features that make us fascinated by him. By book two we love him and by the latest he’s more or less the only one (other than Arya) we care about.

Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series has Locke Lamora, a thief and a con-man as the main character. Here we have a different flavour of anti-hero. Whereas Tyrion is a nasty piece of work who occasionally displays redeeming features, Locke is actually an alright guy—he loves his friends etc.—who screws people over for a living. Like Robin Hood or the IRS. He’s a ‘hero’ who is also criminal.

And there’s so many more in fantasy that you wonder if we ever wanted true heroes. Severian in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (torturer…tick), Sand dan Glotka in Abercrombie’s The First Law books (yay, another torturer…tick), Thomas Covenant in Donaldson’s epic (rapist…tick), Cugel the Clever in Jack Vance’s Tales of the Dying Earth (thief, cheat, rake…tick), Raistlin in Dragonlance (black magic, betray brother…OK…tick), Fitz in Hobb’s Farseer trilogy (assassin? Hey, sure…beats looking after the horses…tick) and, of course, Elric.

Now Elric I did love as a kid. More accurately I coveted Stormbringer, the soul-drinking sword that Elric was dominated by. To a DnD player the idea of a sword that munched on opponents life energy (and therefore boosted your own) was fantastic. The weapon Black-razor in White Plume Mountain was an obvious copy and Elric even got his own RPG supplement for RuneQuest. 

Elric and Stormbringer

 Elric was the first great fantasy anti-hero in my mind. Before him we had the muscle bound might of Conan, the noble Aragorn and the almost biblical Aslan. In his very first appearance we meet him on the way to slaughter his own nation. He then further fails to impress us by wining about his doom-ridden destiny, betraying people all over the place, becoming addicted to a vampire-sword and then killing all his buddies one by one. Admittedly some he kills by accident, because he gets carried away with Stormbringer; but you’d still not add him as a friend on Facebook would you?

So why do we love them? These are characters that are far darker than the tough guys of the cinema. We all admire the surly Han Solo and love the hard as nails Clint Eastwood characters. But these are characters that are morally dubious, at times nasty and at times ruthless. They are killers, torturers, thieves—the sort most of us would eschew in reality. Why do we enjoy reading about them?

I think it’s the escapism in another form and I think therefore that that is why fantasy (the ultimate asylum from our troubled world) is replete with them. These are characters whose achievements within the books seem all the more admirable, characters that surpass all the faults and the weaknesses that they have, to become victorious. They are creations who resonate with us because of their flaws, which after all we all have (though perhaps not to the extent of these characters). Why should a being in a fantasy world have to have any less hang-ups than us?

Anti-heroes act in ways that appeal to our darker instincts. They allow us to slip away from the frustration of modern life and the constraints of society and unleash a bit of spite. Far better to read about Tyrion Lannister’s Machiavellian antics or Elric hoovering up a few souls than turn around and give our annoying bosses a head-butt on the nose.

And we can see characters every bit as flawed as ourselves and revel in the redemption that many achieve and know that for even the most screwed-up and damaged that there is hope.

So long live the anti-hero and remember even Aslan probably had some darker moments that were cut from the books. I fact I distinctly remember him hanging out with the Snow Witch sharing a crack-pipe…

In Another Lifetime ...

...I will get that armband tattoo. I'm on the verge of hangy-down arm skin now, and to get a celtic symbol or barbed wire at this point would be wanna be-ish.

Looks good on HER, though.

I will work for the Peace Corps. I really meant to do it this go-round, but I somehow got too caught up with laundry, family functions, and my own inability to stand in direct sunlight without exploding into flames.

I'll write my books before I reach middle age, so I can be a Cool Young Artist, not a Comfortably Padded Mother Figure. People will sigh over the fact that I'm a prodigy instead of congratulating me for finding a hobby in my golden years.

My skiing ability will be much better, since I'll learn how when I'm three, not thirty.

Ditto skating, and every other sporting activity. Plus I'll be able to do the splits until I'm seventy.

I'll insist on Sunday mornings spent in the reading room (did I mention that I'll have a "reading room?") as I calmly read the Sunday papers, instead of forcing my child to wear anything other than a Hogwarts robe and flip flops to church.

My second-hand bookstore, the one with a large black cat asleep in the front bay window, will be well-established by the time I'm married so no one can talk me out of it.

I'll eat a lot more meringues. You can't get enough of those things.

Also Irish sausages.

The thing is, though, that probably I already made all these pledges to myself in my last lifetime. Still, I will definitely read more good books, and I'm going to fight for that second hand bookstore and that cat.

Speaking of good books, I have a great new author on my blog tomorrow. His name is Ross Kitson, and he'll guest blog here on Fresh Pot of Tea, on the subject of anti-heroes. (You know, those guys who are heroic but really flawed too, not all squeaky clean like Superman. I love those guys.)

He is the author of Dreams of Darkness Rising, a fantasy that has all kinds of cool surprises inside.

See you here!