Saturday, June 23, 2018

Excerpt: The Gilded King


The Sovereign Series:
The Sovereign series is set in future Europe, in a world in which the human population has been decimated by a blood-borne virus so that only one, small city remains. That city, the Blue, is controlled by a vampiric race called the Silver.

Beyond its boundaries, the world is contaminated by a vaccine that was developed in order to combat the virus. The humans believe that instant death awaits them in the forests beyond the city walls, the forests of the Red, but in fact the effect of the vaccine is quite different: it not only protects humans from the virus, but it also causes the Silver to be turned human.

The protagonists of the series are Julia, a human teenager, and Cameron, a Silver who is millennia old. The series follows the characters as they address the corruption of the Blue and stand against an ancient enemy who wants to take control of it for himself. Their endeavours bring them face to face with the zombies that the vaccine should have eradicated, and force Julia to reassess everything she thought she knew about the world.

The series is targeted at young adults. The books contain horror, profanity, M/F and M/M romance, and some limited sexual content.

Excerpt:
At the very furthest point of the temple, at the end of the double row of pillars that processed towards it, there was a pedestal mounted on a stepped dais. A figure was laid out on top of it. For a moment, Julia froze, thinking it was a real person lying there, slumbering in the temple, but something didn’t fit.
The figure wasn’t breathing. It wasn’t moving at all.
‘Come on,’ Lucas said, leading her down the aisle towards it.
‘Is it a statue?’ she asked.
‘A tomb, really.’
As they walked, he snuffed out the lamps that lined the walls, until finally the only illumination came from the rounded alcove into which the dais rose. It was a bright island in the centre of the darkness, and in the middle of it the statue shone: a man, wearing fine clothing in an unfamiliar style, with a blanket of stone covering his body. His exposed skin was tinged with a sheen of gold that glowed like the walls of the temple.
‘He looks so real,’ she said, reaching out to touch the golden curls that crowned his head. They were slick under her fingers, so intricate they might have been moulded from a real person.
‘They say he was.’
‘You mean this is his coffin?’ The pedestal certainly looked like a tomb. It was wide and deep enough to accommodate a body.
‘No,’ Lucas said, ‘I mean that this is him, that this statue was once alive.’
Julia’s hand had been tracing the lines of the face, but now she snatched it away. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am.’
‘This is why you brought me here,’ she said.

‘Of course. You want to hear the fairytale, don’t you?’ 



Author Bio:
Josie lives in Oxford, England, with her husband and two cats. When she’s not writing, she works as a lawyer, specialising in intellectual property and commercial law. She also runs a video book review club, The Gin Book Club, through her website.
The Solis Invicti series (a prequel series to the Sovereign series) is available now.

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Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

1 comment:

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