Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of Black Wings”

This week I’m reading The Shadow of Black Wings by James Calbraith, another book I got free from the BookBub mailing list. This one is sort of an alternate Victorian history/steampunk/fantasy mashup. Oh, and there are dragons. (T’Sian would, I think, eat them for lunch, but still, anything’s better with dragons right?) And now, on to the two-sentence quote!

“The balance of power must be sustained. Rome, Varyaga, and the Shahr are the most powerful nations on the continent — we can’t let any of them grow any stronger.”

Yes, the speaker is talking about Rome and then two places you never heard of. I’m reading the book, and I don’t even know what they’re supposed to be historical analogues of. Wikipedia suggests Varyaga might correspond to the Viking territories (assuming the book doesn’t take place in its other reference, which is Middle-Earth), and that maybe Shahr has something to do with Iran. I’m sure that if they’re important, they will be explained. (I have a couple of other of its exotic locales figured out — Qin is China, and Yamato is Japan. I think.)

Oh, with all that alternate history of geography I almost forgot the teaser from The War of the Ravels Or Whatever I’m Going To Call The Conclusion of “Shards”! Well, not really …

“The creature is already doing something,” Yardle said from the other table, not looking up from his scrolls. “It is breaking our enchantments. The dissolution of the golems is proof enough of that.”

Mercy said, “So you don’t think it was me who—”

“You are hardly powerful enough to break these spells,” Yardle said, his tone suggesting that Mercy had been boasting about how she’d turned all the statues into dust and, while she was at it, had hung the moon and set the sun on fire.

Normally I would say something snarky about my own book at this point, but instead here’s Missy Higgins singing about being set on fire, because it’s late and I’m tired.