22nd March 2019, Lion Hudson, 176 pages, Paperback,
Summary from Lion Hudson
Antimony 'the tall dwarf' finds the broken shards of a magic mirror.
Within the shards he glimpses the ruins of a palace and sees a vision of
it restored. He gathers the shards up and lovingly restores the mirror.
Returning to admire the mirror, he finds a stranger who shows Antimony a
fuller version of his vision in the mirror. Excited, Antimony rushes to
show others and he explains to the dwarf high council that he believes
they must restore the palace. Unfortunately, the builders are noticed by
the local ruler, 'the Usurper'. He resents the idea of the king
returning so sends his troops in the night to destroy much of the
building work. The builders are demoralised and Antimony runs away from
his quest. Heading back to the mirror, he once again meets the
mysterious stranger, who helps him understand his true identity and
gives him hope and self-esteem.
Nayu's thoughts
So this book isn't a book review, because while I have reviewed similar books in the past it doesn't appeal to me at the moment However, I am sure it's the kind of book you will like so not only has Luke kindly provided a guest post, the publisher sent me a copy of the book so I can make the competition an international one! I hope you like what Luke has to say, and remember to enter the competition below the guest post! First here are link's to follow Luke on social media and buy his book (for others/yourself in case you don't win the competition). I don't receive anything by you using the Amazon link.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukeaylen
What's In A Name? by Luke Aylen
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| Meet Luke! |
Info from Publisher:
Luke is a relatively new on the scene fantasy author.
His first book, The Mirror and the Mountain (Lion Hudson, 2018),
introduced people to the magical world of Presadia, in turmoil and anarchy
after a rebellion against it’s king. In his new sequel, The Forgotten
Palace, an unlikely hero is born. Antimony, the ‘tall dwarf’ is thrown into
the front line of a battle for Presadia’s very future. It’s a thrilling story
filled with complex and interesting characters and surprising twists and turns.
In this author takeover, Luke discusses the exhausting process of naming
characters.
Luke's post
Lots
of my friends are having babies. The agony they go through trying to pick a
name is almost comical. They buy books of names, use online name generators and
start listing their favourite cloud formations or comic book characters in
pursuit of the quirkiest, most unique name.
Well
I have no sympathy. You know why? They have it easy! Unless they are churning
out dodecatablets (like twins but twelve…) they only need to name ONE baby!
They think that’s hard? Try becoming an author. I have to name dozens of
characters for every book.
I’m not
talking about any old author, I’m talking about fantasy authors. If you are basing your books
in our world, you can just eat your way through a few of those baby name books
I mentioned. If you are in a fantasy world then that won’t work! You have to
invent EVERYTHING!
People
often ask me where I get the names from in my books. The main characters from
my first book, The
Mirror and the Mountain, were from our world, which made
things easier. I stole the names of my goddaughter and another friend’s son
(Jonah still struggles to realise the book isn’t actually about him!) But the
other characters were more trouble.
My
Presadia books, particularly The Forgotten Palace which has just been released, contain
lots of dwarves for instance. Snow White already nicked the list of adjectives,
so I had to come up with something else. Dwarves live underground and are
miners. It made sense to me that their names would connect with what they knew.
If you read my books you’ll see that all the dwarves (including Antimony the
main character of The
Forgotten Palace) are named after rocks, precious stones or
minerals. It actually allowed for a lot of fun and I was even able to sneak in
a few cameos, giving real-life friends dwarven names (like Adamite-the-Counter
for my accountant friend, Adam).
A
few other characters are cheeky hidden nods to friends. When Dave, Liz
challenged me to get their names into the book I decided to simply reverse
their names. Evad became a passing reference to a dragon slayer and Zil ended
up becoming one of the main characters in The Forgotten Palace!
Hiding
something in names is actually quite good fun. Even the name Presadia has a
hidden meaning to it (although I’m not going to tell you that one—see if you
can work it out!)
So,
soon-to-be parents, cut your complaining! Next time you have an argument about
whether to call the baby Cumulous-Nimbus or Captain Marvel, take a moment to
remember the plight of the poor fantasy author, desperately trying to think up
hundreds of convincing names for their book! Then think of a friend, reverse
their name, and call your baby that.
Competition
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| The Proof is slightly different to this cover. |
All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning an ARC paperback copy of The Forgotten Palace by Luke is to fill in the form below! It is an international competition so it doesn't matter where you live. Please note the proof copy is similar but not the same as the finished cover. It's got more red on it. The competition will run for two weeks, this time I'll put the correct link up on Twitter (unlike the last one...sorry for that), it will end midnight on 12th April 2019.
1 comment:
Would love to win this :)
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