His golden eyes flicked open, blinked, and narrowed
to a squint as he finally lifted up his great, horned head. He shrugged the
veil of wings. He uncoiled from his most precious gem and lumbered upward,
following the airborne trail up through the high tunnel to the opening just
beside the cataract.
Only his muzzle appeared at first, shining like tar
in the slanting sunlight, but even that merest of appearances stirred notice
among the hovering hawks and vultures: Look. Be warned and wary. The master had
awakened.
His head slid further out, taking in the day. The
clouds had lifted. The sky was polished glass, but the familiar whisper was
still there, coming from below. Down on the near shore of the inlet was a
scuttled boat. Again his eyes narrowed, trying to figure from the tides just
how long ago the wreck had occurred, and whether its victims were still on
premise. He hoped not. Men had their place, but it wasn’t here.
…He crawled further out onto the ledge and extended
his neck toward the curtain of water, which was fuller today than usual,
gushing down from the mountains after all that rain. He helped himself to
several gulps. He let the bracing cold beat on his head a while, then shook
free with a glistening, majestic explosion, lifted his wings and leapt. He glided
most of the way down, turning three wide circles in the crux of the fjord, his
great spanned shadow dashing along the cliff-side, flicking across the
cataract, then across the blue surface below, around and up and around again
three times before finally re-meeting him, claw to claw, on the strand beside
the boat...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
…Here
again, his natural figure crouched beside her in the dank darkness of the cave,
watching her in silence as she slept, struggling with cravings which were new
to him, both tender and violent, and which he could only really compare to
hunger… (from ASMODEUS)
On the
cusp of the Great War, an even more pitched battle is waged in the furthest
corner of the Nordic highlands, the final chapter of a centuries-old rivalry,
pitting a troubled bloodline of thieves, journeyman, and politicians against
the last and greatest dragon of the hemisphere, Asmodeus.
Until
now, the source of this antagonism has been a single gemstone, the fabled
shamir, whose history traces to the coffers of King Solomon. The present clash,
however, has been sparked by the emergence of an even more desirable, more
defiant, and more powerful force than that.
Inspired
by the golden legend of St. Margaret, Brooks Hansen’s Asmodeus is a masterfully
woven tapestry of history, myth, and fantasy, in the tradition of
J.R.R.Tolkien, Bram Stoker, and C.S. Lewis. By turns a romance, an adventure,
and the darkest imaginable Gothic, his tale is also, as seen through the eyes
of the maiden Margrét, an unflinching exploration of our divided nature — what
makes us beasts, what makes us human, and what makes us divine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
BROOKS HANSEN is an author, screenwriter,
essayist, and teacher. His novels – THE MONSTERS OF ST. HELENA, PERLMAN’S
ORDEAL, THE CHESS GARDEN, and BOONE (co-authored with Nick Davis) were all New
York Times Notable Books. THE CHESS GARDEN was also selected as a PW Best Book
of the Year in 1995. He has written one book for Young Readers, CAESAR’S
ANTLERS, which he also illustrated. In 2009 he released his first memoir, THE
BROTHERHOOD OF JOSEPH, and in 2005 he received a John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowship for his most recent book, JOHN THE BAPTIZER, which was published in
2009 by W.W. Norton. More recently, his fiction appeared in CENTRAL PARK: AN
ANTHOLOGY (Bloomsbury USA, 2012), and he has an essay slated to appear in
another upcoming anthology THE GOOD BOOK (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
Brooks Hansen is the critically acclaimed author
of The Chess Garden and 7 other books, most recently Asmodeus: The Legend of
Margret and the Dragon. He has recently launched his own imprint, Star Pine
Books. He lives in Carpinteria, California with his wife and children.
Amazon Author Page:
Website link is brookshansen.com
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