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Dragon Raider
by Ava Richardson
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: March 28th 2018
Summary:
Will adapting to a changing world make one young woman lose touch with where she came from?
Far from the kingdom of Torvald, on the Western Isles near the coast, Sea Dragons rule the skies. Lila is the daughter of the Raider leader, destined to take his place one day aboard their plundering ships. Her people value only what shiny trinkets they can get their hands on, but she aspires to much more than that: Lila wants the Raiders to become Dragon Mercenaries, dragon riders who help protect merchant fleets and navies from attack. Her father Kasian is skeptical, but a young monk named Danu—with a quest of his own—comes bearing a prophecy claiming that Lila is the lost heir of Roskilde, a born Dragon Rider.
With Danu’s guidance, Lila finds the unruly dragon she’s destined to bond with—but the mismatched pair soon learn that much more than just their futures is at stake.
Buy Links:
Amazon US -> http://amzn.to/2HtaG4x
Amazon UK -> http://amzn.to/2p622kK
Amazon World -> http://myBook.to/DragonRaider
EXCERPT:
Churning seas, bright with blood.
Fire billowing over the water, and dark skies heavy with thunder…
“Aii!” The old woman awakes with a
start to find herself in her simple round room in her simple round hut. The
inner walls are dark, though she knows with the dawn the plaster will gleam
white. The floor is yet the solid, deep mahogany planks she has trod for
decades. The roof is still the weathered, bone-white but also bone-strong giant
supports of giant driftwood, with heavy, warm thatch over that. Here are not
the churning and frothing waters of her dreams. Not the billows of fire, not
the dark storm skies.
The old woman sighs deeply, patting
her frail chest as if to quiet the night terrors that had so recently fluttered
there.
To say that this woman is old is an
understatement. Chabon Kaidence is beyond ancient. Her pale skin is deeply
lined as if cracked, and her eyes are sunken – but there is still a spark of
vitality within their depths, like hidden stars. Even the folds and wrinkles of
her skin still glows despite its age.
The Matriarch of the West Witches
has been alive for a long time, long enough to know when a dream has stopped
being just that, and has instead, become a prophecy.
A pale hand moves unsteadily to the
wicker table, where a silver bell sits on piece of rough-woven, colorful
fabric. She rings it, once, for the silver chime to cut through the night like
a shooting star.
“Mother?” A voice sounds almost
immediately at the heavy purple curtains that hang over her door, and, for a
moment Chabon blinks from the glare of brighter light outside.
“You fool!” snaps another voice
behind the first, and into her room step two women: one is tall and lean, with
skin the color of rich, warm earth, and the other is as pale as Chabon lying
before them. The first has braids of black hair falling behind her back like
tree roots, whereas the pale woman has fields of golden hair streaming behind
her like sunshine. It is this fair and pale woman who snaps at her darker
colleague.
“Afar, you’ll blind the Mother.
Turn off that light!” she says angrily, pushing her way into the room to cross
the mahogany floor and stand at Chabon’s bedside.
Afar scowls for a moment, but she
does as she is advised, turning the notches on the lantern until it only emits
a dulled, yellowish glow as she steps into the room. Behind her, the Matriarch
catches a glimpse of the wooden walkways that stretch from one hut to the next,
crisscrossing the island of Sebol like vines.
“I am blinded by the darkness,
Ohotto, not the light,” Chabon breathes to her two most-trusted sisters amongst
the witches.
“Yes, Mother.” Ohotto hangs her
pale head in shame, as Afar steps to her bedside bringing with her a pouch of
rich and nourishing purple berry juice.
“Are you thirsty, Mother? Do your
aches pain you?” Afar says in her heavy voice. She is not a native to these
Western Islands, but she has spent many years here, under Chabon’s tutelage.
“No time to drink. I will repeat a
dream for you, a nightmare – and I want you both to remember it, and to set it
down on paper as soon as you can,” Chabon says. “It is a nightmare that I have
had many times over the years, but now it comes frequently, every moon! Every
week!”
“A prophecy.” Afar nods her head in
awe. This will not be the first such prophecy that has fallen from the oldest
witch’s lips. Afar Nguoa just hopes that it is also not the last.
“The seas are churning, bright with
blood, and atop the waves there are flames,” Chabon intones, her voice
carrying in the still airs of her hut. “There is a darkness to the skies, a
darkness that is more than thunder, but a darkness as if the sun is blocked by
great wings….” The old woman wets her lips, remembering the other parts of the
nightmare that she has had throughout her life. Like the stationary stars in
the sky can suddenly coalesce into a constellation when one squints at them
right, so the nightmares fall into place, one after another.
“There is a child, born from the
waters. A girl, rising from the north-east sea, under a dragon’s angry call and
upon her head is a crown made of leaping waves.”
About the Author:
Ava Richardson writes epic page-turning Young Adult Fantasy books. She creates lovable characters and drops them into intricate worlds that are barely contained within your eReader. Her current work is the ‘Return of the Darkening Series’, which features Seb, Thea and their shared dragon, Kalax.
She grew up on a steady diet of fantasy and science fiction books handed down from her two big brothers – and despite being dog-eared and missing pages, she loved escaping into the magical worlds that those authors created. Her favorites were the ones about dragons; where they’d swoop, dive and soar through the skies of these enchanted lands.
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