Zenith – The First Book of Ascension
Can you see the story breathing?
Imagine
A mountain so
great it takes a year to travel from base to summit
A sun so
powerful it drives you into madness if you look at it
An ascent so
vital it determines the fate of the world
A summit so
precious it holds the key to the divine
The world of the great
Mountain is unstable. Giant pillars erupt from the surface and yawning chasms
form unpredictably underfoot. Since the Maelir first stood on its slopes in the
distant past, they have sought to still its anger and control its power. Each
year, twin brothers are chosen to make a perilous journey to the summit. If
they survive they will be witness to Zenith, and the secrets will be revealed
to them.
When Atreu and Teyth embark
on their Ascent, their Talismans lead them onto conflicting paths that will
ultimately set brother against brother. And this time the Ascent itself is in
peril as unknown forces that have long craved the power of Zenith will stop at
nothing to make it their own even if it means destroying the very thing that
sustains all life the Mountain itself.
Zenith excerpt: Chapter Fourteen
A
yell cut the darkness
Atreu
and Cluric jumped up and raced over to the other side of the rocks.
‘Get
it off,’ screamed Ronan, shaking his leg frantically.
Atreu
saw the small animal attached to it and froze.
‘It’s
a Dusk-rat,’ he cried.
Hrulth
was holding out his sword in front of him. ‘Hold still, will you?’ he said. ‘I
don’t want to stab your leg.’
Ronan
couldn’t, so several of the others held it down for him while Hrulth speared
the animal.
‘Get
it off!’ screamed Ronan again, tears rolling down his face.
Hrulth
grabbed the animal’s tail, but its teeth remained firmly embedded in Ronan’s
leg. ‘This thing can’t still be alive.’
Cluric
pushed his way through. ‘These Dusk-rats just don’t let go,’ he said as he
pulled back on the animal’s snout with all his strength, slowly revealing the
needle sharp teeth as he removed them from Ronan’s leg.
Hrulth
took the Dusk-rat from him. He held it up and watched the blood drip from its
mouth. ‘I’ve never heard of one of these things,’ he said in disgust.
‘There’s
more of them,’ cried a shrill voice from the top of the rocks. ‘They’re
everywhere!’
Suddenly
the camp was in turmoil. The Dusk-rats swarmed over them like bees.
Atreu
felt a sharp pain as one bit into his leg, and he staggered back to fetch his
sword. Another one dropped on him from the rocks above, but he managed to throw
it off before it could dig its teeth into his shoulder. He stopped to get his
sword and quickly picked it up as another Dusk-rat ran over his hand. His leg
screamed with pain as he looked down at the animal attached to his ankle. It
stared back at him with a black-eyed ferocity. Atreu clenched his teeth and
lanced it through the head. Using his sword as a lever, he prised its mouth
open and watched the animal fall to the ground.
Equinox – The Second Book of Ascension
Can you see the
story breathing?
The Keep
The most beautiful city on the great Mountain
The pinnacle of
Maelir culture
The home of the
Inner Sanctum
The place where
secrets hide
The fate of the Mountain
hangs in balance at the time of Equinox, and even the Keep can no longer remain
untouched. The Maelir are desperate to defend it, the Faemir to demolish it,
the windriders to claim it. But unknown to them all, a dark force has already
emerged from the chaos to seize power.
As Atreu and Verlinden strive to decipher the power of
the Talisman that has defined Atreu’s Ascent, Teyth and Valkyra are locked in a
desperate battle that neither of them can win. At a time when darkness and
light are in perfect equilibrium, when Maelir and Faemir must find a way to
break the deadlock and avoid annihilation, the world’s fate lies in the Book of
Ascension.
Equinox excerpt: Chapter Seven
Praether
felt a strange tingling down his back as he unlocked the last chamber of the
librum. It was as if he was suddenly given a vague awareness that something had
just changed, or was about to change.
He
opened the door and walked in.
‘I
thought you would be here,’ he said.
An
old man stood ankle-deep in dust by the bookshelf. He looked up from his
reading and half smiled. It appeared as if a grey mist had started to snake its
way up the Reader’s body.
‘Wait,’
cried Praether. ‘Don’t go.’
The
mist continued no further.
Praether
gasped. ‘Something has changed,’ he said, more to himself. And then to
the Reader: ‘Why have I been able to stop you disappearing this time?’
The
Reader raised his eyebrows as if to say, I think you know.
Praether
shivered. ‘No … no I don’t.’
The
Reader motioned the arch-librer to come closer.
Praether
walked slowly towards him, kicking up small swarms of dust with each step,
until he stood so close he could have reached out and touched him. The mist
started to twist its way up the Reader’s legs as he slowly handed Praether the
Book of Maelur.
‘Tell
me – please,’ said Praether. ‘Tell me what has changed.’
The
mist continued up his torso, and his body began wavering in front of Praether’s
eyes.
‘Please,
wait,’ cried Praether.
The
Reader opened his mouth. ‘Read,’ he said, and Praether drew a sharp breath – it
was the first word he had ever heard the old man speak.
The
arch-librer watched the mist claim the remainder of the Reader’s body. As his
face faded, Praether could still make out the strange half smile. For a brief
moment it was as if a human-sized cloud floated just above the floor, and then
it dissipated into nothingness.
The
tingling sensation Praether had felt on entering the room now shot through
every nerve. As he looked down to read the words on the page, he knew what had
changed.
Somehow,
in some strange way, he had become part of the story.
Eclipse – The Lost Book of Ascension
Can you see the
story breathing?
What happens if
after the winter solstice, the days keep getting shorter?
And shorter?
Until there is
an eternal night?
What happens as
the darkness grows?
And the
creatures of dusk take control of the Mountain?
And the quest
for the third Book is the only hope?
The Mountain is in its death
throes as the Nazir send their wraiths to finish what the dusk-rats and grale
had begun. Soon there will be no daylight to protect the Maelir and Faemir, and
with each twilight there are fewer places to hide. Will the Mountain finally
collapse under its own instability or will Atreu and Verlinden’s descent find
the words of salvation in the Lost Book of Ascension?
Eclipse excerpt: Chapter Eight
In
the growing dusk the Source took on an increasing dream-like quality.
Atreu
became aware of his own breathing, and soon the air around him seemed to be
pulsing in time. A soft lap-lapping of water merged with the rhythm of his
breaths. After a while he realised that the dark figures on the lake were
coming closer. As they approached, he could see that the cowled monks were
sitting bolt upright on the floating prayer mats and paddling slowly to shore.
By
the time the monks reached the edges of the lake, Atreu was mesmerised by the
serene poetry of the scene. Over a hundred Source Holy Men now reached the
shore and stood up from their mats in the same fluid motion. Each one remained
perfectly still, facing the cliffs with their back to the lake, as the others
arrived at the shore. Finally the last one arrived, and Atreu waited, expecting
something to happen. He could detect no signal or sign, but as one, the monks
gave out a deep sonorous tone that filled the air like honey. As he listened,
the tone grew deeper and sweeter. It so enveloped him that he could not be sure
that his own voice had not joined in the twilight chorus.
And
when he thought no sound could be richer, he became aware that the monks by the
lake had been joined by the monks in the cliffs behind him, and the chorus
seemed to reach a height and depth he had never imagined. He had been moved by
Felsen chanting before, but what he was hearing now was on another plane. No
pictures or visions ran through his head. This was pure sound, devoid of any
content or images. It was as if his head was being cleared, and filled with a
single resonant note.
The
cliffs, the water, the air itself, seemed to become one with the tone, adding
to its depth and flavour. And then, just as Atreu lost any sense of a world
that wasn’t made of the sound, it faded, the last note lingering like the
sweetest of aftertastes.
Buy the books!
She spooned the soup from her bowel – the joys of
typos!
Dirk Strasser
This bowl typo appeared in a close-to-final
draft of my fantasy novel, Zenith. Unfortunately, spellcheck won't pick up an
error like this. Even more
unfortunately, I didn't pick it up. I
was lucky because a friend of mine saw it on a read-through and had a good
laugh at my expense.
You've got to ask yourself: why did I write
it, and after I’d written it, why didn't I pick this up? I know the difference between bowl and bowel
– and why you would want to spoon something out of one, but not the other. I guess typos happen because typists are
human, and it’s only human to make mistakes.
One theory puts a lot of typos down to the “fat-finger
syndrome” where your fingers hit two keys at the same time on a keyboard or two
buttons together on a touch screen. That
could have been the case with my bowel typo – the “w” and “e” are next to each
other on a QWERTY keyboard.
Simply trying to write something too
quickly is another reason for typos. Recent Search Engine Optimization research
has indicated that misspellings probably occur in around 10% of search queries. Typo-squatters actually use this to make
money by registering a possible typo of a well-known website address hoping to
get traffic when internet users mistype that address into a web browser. Or even more sneakily, they deliberately put
typos into a webpage or its metadata so that search engines direct people who
make this error to the site.
Here are some typos that obviously didn’t make
it through the checking processes.
These two prove that no word is saef from
the typo-bug:
Sometimes, it’s just one letter that makes
the difference:
Sometimes it’s two letters:
“Germans
are so small that there may be as many as one billion, seven hundred million of
them in a drop of water.” – Mobile Press US
“I
have a graduate degree in unclear physics.” – job
application
Sometimes writers should really hang their
heads in shame:
Well, does we?
Sometimes the correction is funnier than
the original typo:
Sometimes the typo correction has a typo
correction:
Typos are funny things. Thank goodness for editrs.
About the author:
Dirk Strasser has written over 30 books for major publishers in
Australia and is an Active Member of the SFWA. He has won multiple Australian
Publisher Association Awards, a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement, and
has been short-listed for the Aurealis and Ditmar Awards a number of times. His
short story, “The Doppelgänger Effect”, appeared in the World Fantasy
Award-winning anthology, Dreaming Down Under. His acclaimed fantasy
series The Books of Ascension – including Zenith and Equinox – was
originally published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and by Heyne Verlag in
Germany and has been re-published by the Macmillan Momentum imprint, this time
including the “lost” third book. His fiction has been translated into a number
of languages. His short stories include “The Jesus
Particle“ in Cosmos magazine, “Stories of the Sand” in Realms of Fantasy, and “The Vigilant” in
Fantasy magazine. His most recent sale was “The Mandelbrot
Bet” to the 2014 Tor anthology Carbide Tipped Pens, edited by Ben
Bova and Eric Choi. He founded the Aurealis Awards and has
co-published and co-edited Aurealis magazine
for over 20 years.
Links:
Twitter: @DirkStrasser
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