I came across Kat Ross’ first book, Some Fine Day, just over a year ago and immediately fell in love with her writing. Of course, when I found out she was writing a new book I immediately went to check it out and promptly raised my hand to participate in her book blitz. I am SUPER excited to read The Midnight Sea and if you like YA Fantasy…you should be too! Check out the summary and excerpt below if you need convincing. Then don’t forget to enter the giveaway!
They are the light against the darkness.
The steel against the necromancy of the Druj.
And they use demons to hunt demons….
Nazafareen lives for revenge. A girl of the isolated Four-Legs Clan, all she knows about the King's elite Water Dogs is that they leash wicked creatures called daevas to protect the empire from the Undead. But when scouts arrive to recruit young people with the gift, she leaps at the chance to join their ranks. To hunt the monsters that killed her sister.
Scarred by grief, she's willing to pay any price, even if it requires linking with a daeva named Darius. Human in body, he's possessed of a terrifying power, one that Nazafareen controls. But the golden cuffs that join them have an unwanted side effect. Each experiences the other's emotions, and human and daeva start to grow dangerously close.
As they pursue a deadly foe across the arid waste of the Great Salt Plain to the glittering capital of Persepolae, unearthing the secrets of Darius's past along the way, Nazafareen is forced to question his slavery—and her own loyalty to the empire. But with an ancient evil stirring in the north, and a young conqueror sweeping in from the west, the fate of an entire civilization may be at stake…
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Excerpt:
I saw the first body the moment we emerged from the pass.
He lay on the rocks, arms carefully arranged at his sides. A young man with pale skin and black hair. The gulls had been at him. A cloud of them rose as we galloped down the hillside. I knew that this was how we said goodbye to our dead. Beneath the open sky. Only after his bones had been picked clean would he be ready for burial.
But the sight still unnerved me. I made the sign of the flame.
Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.
We are the light against the darkness.
The corpse we passed lay about five hundred yards from the outer curtain wall of Gorgon-e Gaz. It started at the foot of the cliffs and extended into the shallow water. Grey stone, weathered by centuries of storms blowing in from the Salenian Sea. Curved walls twenty feet thick, with slits for windows.
The breath tightened in my lungs and I unwound the qarha from my face. It caught the wind, streaming out like a scarlet banner. Darius sat behind me in the double saddle, and I didn’t need to look at him to know his eyes were chips of blue ice. I sensed fury in him, and shame.
“Lord Father,” I muttered as we pass two more broken bodies, both in the gold and white tunic of the guards.
Our horse was too well-trained to shy at the carnage—better trained than I was, apparently. I’d become used to killing Druj, but human bodies were another thing entirely. My stomach churned but I kept my face impassive. Only Darius knew how close I was to being sick.
“Hold,” Ilyas barked.
Someone was coming out of the fortress.
I leaned back slightly and dropped the reins. To my right, Tijah and Myrri did the same. They both looked ready to kill anyone who came too close.
It was a man of middle years, with thick white hair and the neck of a bull. He ran up and I saw the badge on his chest, a roaring griffin in a circle—the King’s emblem. This must be the warden.
“What took you so long?” he demanded. “And where are the rest?” He squinted at the six of us and didn’t seem reassured by what he saw. “We need reinforcements—”
“You forget yourself,” Ilyas said calmly. “When you speak to me, you speak to Satrap Jaagos, who has the unpleasant task of informing the King of this disaster. It is eight days ride to Persepolae. Pray hard we find the runners and bring them back before that time.”
The warden paled.
“I need names, both daēva and bonded, including infirmities and whatever else you know about them,” Ilyas said.
The man nodded. “Aren’t you coming inside? I can show you what they did…”
“There’s no time. You can explain to the satrap how they accomplished it. My task is only to catch them.” Ilyas turned to me. “Find the trail while it’s still warm. We’ve already lost too many hours crossing the mountains as it is.”
“Where do you want to start?” I asked Darius.
“At the high tide line,” he replied.
On our way to the prison, I’d learned a few things about Gorgon-e Gaz, the secret stronghold that wasn’t on any maps.
It held one hundred and thirteen daēvas. One hundred and seven now. When the Prophet forged the cuffs during the war, he used the first daēvas he caught to capture the rest. Some died in the fighting. Those that remained after Queen Neblis was driven back across the mountains had been brought here.
They remembered what it was to be free—not like the Water Dog daēvas or the Immortals, who had all been bred in captivity and raised to follow the Way of the Flame. As a result, they couldn’t be trusted outside these walls. But Ilyas told me that the daēvas in Gorgon-e Gaz still served a useful purpose. Their bloodlines were strong. So it was both a prison and a nursery. Before he was sent to the magi in Karnopolis, Darius had been born here.
I was still grappling to understand all this as we rode down to the water. I’d joined the Water Dogs to kill Druj—the Undead kind. I never expected to be hunting daēvas who were more than two centuries old and powerful enough to crack the hulking fortress of Gorgon-e Gaz in half.
Because now that we had reached the tide line, I could see the shards of stone on the seaward side, the waves washing through a jagged crevice that must be forty feet high…
Giveaway
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