Title- Sunbolt
Series- The Sunbolt Chronicles #
1
By-Intisar Khanani
Publication Date- June 17, 2013
Published By- Purple Monkey
Press
Genre- YA Fantasy
Blurb
The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many
secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned
to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she
must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to
undermine the powerful and corrupt Archmage Wilhelm Blackflame.
When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to
detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the
family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse
fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her
charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.
Book Links
Excerpt
“Mgeni! Stay a moment; I have your future
for you.”
I grin, turning
towards the voice. Mama Ali sits beneath the cloth shade of her market stall,
her husband’s catch heaped on the wooden counter before her: mounds of
sardines, glinting silver bright in the sun. Today there’s also a single little
octopus that must have gotten tangled in his nets, it’s fleshy body turned over
to show the white of its tentacles.
With her wide
smile and heavy girth, Mama Ali is a well-known fixture of the fish market, her
laughter booming across the crowded aisles and her penchant for sharing
people’s futures indulged in even by the locals. Her son, ten years old and
shrewder than a hundred year-old owl, perches beside her, watching me.
“You can keep
my future, Mama Ali,” I reply. “It will probably do you more good than me.”
My words draw
laughter from the women at the surrounding stalls. The market stalls are packed
tightly together, and every counter offers up the bounty of the sea, scenting
the air with salt and sea. Above the stalls flap brightly-colored cloth shades,
protecting both the women and the fish from the sun’s heat.
I hear someone
ask what she missed, and a woman replies, calling me mgeni again. My smile slips a notch. I may have adopted the
traditional, brightly colored long skirt and tunic of the local women, as well
as the tightly wound head wrap, but my sand-gold skin and the slant of my eyes
will always mark me as someone else. Mama
Ali may use the term as an endearment, but the echoes I hear now brand me as an
outsider.
Mama Ali holds
out her hand imperiously, a queen demanding tribute from the riffraff that
forms her court. “Come, my friend, keeper of secrets, let us see what we can.”
“What will you
give me?” I ask, hoping ‘keeper of secrets’ is just a phrase she uses on
potential customers. Regardless, I don’t have the coin to pay her, so I may as
well be clear I won’t be giving
anything.
“Give you? Your
future, muddle-brain! And, because you are always admiring my wares, I will
give it to you for free.”
“Oh, very
well.” I acquiesce none too gracefully, offering Mama Ali my hand. Trying not
to fidget, I wait, her palms clasped around my hand. I may be running a little
late, but there’s no reason to think the meeting will have started on time.
Besides, since I wasn’t invited in the first place, no one will miss me. “Don’t
tell me I’m going to meet someone new, dark of skin and—”
“Short,” Mama
Ali agrees.
I nearly choke.
“Short?”
She drops her
voice. “Well, if I want to be sure it happens, short is so much more likely
than tall, isn’t it? At least,” she nods her head to suggest the market, not to
mention the rest the island, “here.”
I laugh. I
think this must be why Mama Ali and I get along so well. “Right. Short and
dark.”
“No.” She pulls
a frown. “For you, something different.”
I glance
towards the sky, gauging the angle of the late morning sun. Magic is one thing,
but divining the future? Not so much. “I really have to—”
“You are going
somewhere,” Mama Ali intones, closing her eyes. I glance at her son in
disbelief. Ali grins wide, his teeth showing pearly white against his
earth-brown skin.
“I was before
you stopped me,” I agree.
Mama Ali heaves
a theatrical sigh, squeezing my hand rather painfully. “Somewhere important,”
she clarifies. She tilts her head as if listening for something. And Mama Ali hears a lot—she has her pulse
on the happenings of Karolene. Maybe there is something she knows. Has she
heard something about the League? Or the Ghost?
She drops my hand, sitting back
with a gasp. “Run!”
About the Author
Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad
and world traveler. Born in Wisconsin, she has lived in five different states
as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first remembers seeing
snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and vaguely recollects having
breakfast with the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo when she was five.
Intisar currently resides in
Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters. Until recently, she
wrote grants and developed projects to address community health and infant
mortality with the Cincinnati Health Department—which was as close as she could
get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising
her family and writing fantasy.
Intisar’s latest projects
include a companion trilogy to her debut novel Thorn, featuring a new
heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife
… and of course, she’s hard at work on the remaining installments of The Sunbolt Chronicles.
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Thanks so much for featuring Sunbolt on your blog!
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