by Paul E. Horseman
The night before his Coming-of-Age, Ghyll and his two friends escaped
their castle on a clandestine hunt that would forever change their
lives. They returned just in time to see their island castle destroyed
by strange warriors from a dragonboat and flocks of burning birds.
Ghyll’s birthday turned into a nightmare as they fled into the night.
This begins an epic journey to find out who is trying to kill them… and
most importantly, why? Fortunately, they can count on colorful new
friends to assist, including a sometimes overly enthusiastic fire mage,
an inexperienced paladin and a female beastmaster who is a ferocious
mountain lion. In a world filled with jealous priests, corrupt
magistrates, bored aristocrats and power-hungry magicians, they try to
survive dark wizards, murderous golems, and fire bird attacks. It soon
becomes apparent that not one but several assassins are after them. Who
are these members of an obscure, long-forgotten organization?
And whose cold hand reaches across the boundaries of space and time to threaten weakened Rhidauna?
While the time is running the friends undertake a quest that takes
them to a large part of Rhidauna. Following them, the reader is carried
along on an exciting journey through a colorful world, whose people,
culture and atmosphere are described with great attention to detail
without the story losing momentum.
Experience the quest! Grab your best travel clothes, strongest
backpack and sharpest sword … or failing that, take an easy chair, a
drink and this exciting book.
About the Author:
Paul E (Erik) Horsman (1952)
Lives in Roosendaal, The Netherlands.
I was born in the year 1952, in the Dutch town of Bussum, a sleepy,
well-to-do place that was home to many artists, musicians, writers and
publishers. As my family were neither artists nor well-to-do, we moved
when I was nine.
When I was seventeen, I started my career as paperclip counter with a
worldwide Dutch producer of baby food. After some months, I was
finished counting, and I looked around for something more interesting.
A love of books drove me to work in a small bookstore in Rotterdam.
An ancient establishment, since 1837, in an old building just too far
away from the city’s modern shopping center. It was a nice job, but
there wasn’t any future in it. Still, I left it a licensed bookseller.
In 1972 I had to do my stitch for Queen and Country, and as a bad
back tied me to a desk job, I applied for a posting overseas. For the
Army, that meant Surinam, then still a member of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands, and one of the most beautiful. Once you’ve seen the jungle,
you will never forget it.
To keep it short, I stayed in business, slowly climbing the ladder,
until in 1995 I changed direction. That year I joined a large
educational institution, at a school specialized in Dutch language and
integration courses for foreigners. That meant immigrants, refugees and
international businessmen, an interesting mix. It was great work, on the
one side teaching crash courses Dutch to high-powered people (we got a
lot of very well-educated refugees) and on the other teaching reading
and writing to people who had never ever held a pen before, let alone a
computer. To see them growing was a reward in itself.
Unhappily, due to changed legislation the language school closed in mid-2012.
In the meantime, I had started my first book (Rhidauna) in 2009 and
it got published by Zilverspoor Publishers just before I got laid off.
As my age, five years from retirement, made it nigh on impossible to
find something else, I started building a career as an independent
author.
SF and Fantasy have fascinated me since my high school days, but
apart from some juvenile trash, I never seriously tried to write
anything. But after several false starts and associated discouraged
intervals, a spark began to grow and mid-2010, the first two parts of
Shadow of the Revenaunt were more or less written.
My style is probably a bit old-fashioned, Fantasy as a heroic tale
with sympathetic heroes/heroines and black villains, in which good
always triumphs in the end.
I don’t use my characters as cannon fodder; they get hurt, but their dying is rare.
One of the other elements in my writing I think important is, that
both male and female characters have their own lives and goals. Most of
them exist primarily for themselves, not as a prop or a love interest
for other MC’s. The only character who did die, was actually a prop and I
had him killed just to take that away from my lead MC.
Original Rhidaunan wax tablet
This is the same writing tablet main character Ghyll Hardingraud carried with him on his quest through Rhidauna.
It’s the local equivalent of the iPad, made of wood with a
re-usable wax layer. It measures ca 20 cm x 12 cm (when closed). Incl.
bronze stylus.
Excerpt
CHAPTER 4 – HASPEN
(Point of View: Secondary Main Character – Damion)
The rising sun peeked through the window of the infirmary
and her rays played over Damion’s bed. The young man lay flat on his back,
swaddled in bandages like a newborn. His ribs itched, but they had made
scratching them impossible. He could move his hands and forearms, nothing else;
even his upper arms the healer’s nurse had tied to his body. You must lie
still, the man had told him, probably for weeks.
A fly buzzed around his head, a metallic bluebottle. Damion
did not even notice the creature; he was too deep into his troubled thoughts to
let its attention bother him. Bitterly he stared at the ceiling, wondering what
was the meaning of his life. It was a hopeless exercise, because every path he
took, every thread he followed, ended at the contemptuous eyes of Guard
Sergeant Luyon. His father’s sneering remarks milled through his head: You’re
nothing, boy. You will never be a man. You’re not a soldier; you’re a weakling.
You’re not my son; your mother must have done it with someone else. Every word was a hatchet blow to the roots of his
self-confidence. However hard he’d tried; his father had disparaged everything
he did. Damion’s hands gripped the blanket while he fought against his tears.
Just then, Ghyll and Olle entered and he caught his breath. Ghyll smiled at
him, like always, and he sighed with relief. He lifted his hand. “They taped me
in this morning,” he said. “Look, that’s all I can raise.” Then it dawned on
him what he said, and he gave a sheepish grin. “Oh, I meant I’m tied up from
here to there.”
