Today we are lucky enough to reveal the cover for the last book in Alicia Wanstall-Burke’s Coraidic Sagas: Empire of Shadows! But first the author herself would like to say a few words.
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2014—the year I started writing The Coraidic Sagas—in so many ways, for so many reasons, feels like a lifetime ago.
The year I embarked on this new adventure with new characters, I had only the barest idea of where the story would lead me. I had plans, and hopes, and doubts. I had a map, and a threat that needed a resolution, but could I make it work? Could I actually write a whole-ass trilogy? Me, a nobody amateur from a tiny Outback mining town?
What if no one wanted to read a Bronze to Iron Age, Australian-inspired fantasy story about two kids trapped by the expectations of their utterly awful parents? What if I wrote myself to the event horizon of a gaping plot hole that couldn’t be escaped? What if it ended up in a bottom draw somewhere, gathering dust, never to be read?
Seven years later, on verge of publishing the third and final instalment of that whole-ass trilogy, I can’t help wondering what that budding writer would think if she could see herself now.
She’d certainly be surprised at exactly what we’ve been through, least of all writing Empire of Shadows amid a global pandemic. Three surgeries on her right hand, prosthetics going in twice only to come out again. Prosthetics in her ankle, nerve damage to her hip, chronic pain. She couldn’t have foreseen writing chapters in deserted airports, flying in eerily empty passenger jets back to Australia from the UK. Editing for two weeks while locked in a quarantine hotel, not to mention the lockdown induced publication delays.
Yet somehow, Empire of Shadows has emerged from beneath the weight of trans-continental separation, home-schooling, a bout of Covid-19, 32,948 kilometres of air travel, and lockdown chic (oh, how I’ll miss my yoga pants).
Despite it all, this trilogy has an ending. And the journey I started with Lidan and Ranoth, their friends and families, all their victories and losses, has been received with more excitement and fervour than I could have hoped for. To those readers who stuck with me, gave me their encouragement, and shouted their enthusiasm all over the internet—I can’t thank you nearly enough.
In her final stunning cover for the trilogy, Pen Astridge hints at the distance Lidan and Ran have yet to travel, and the forces standing in their way. Just as the Woaden Empire looms at the horizon of their world, a malignant mass of colonisation and imperial might, the soaring columns of the city stand in the background. The figure hints at a power yet unexplored and unknown, darkness encroaching from the edges, threatening to consume what little light remains.
Empire of Shadows will take these characters to the edges of the world they know. It will stretch every fibre of emotional fortitude they thought they had. It will break their hearts all over again, demanding everything they have left, to win a war that began all those years ago.
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Excited? I am! But before we have a look at Pen Astridge’s amazing work of art, let’s check out the official blurb.
In the aftermath of battle, a truth is laid bare—the world, and the people within it, are not as they appear.
Adrift without an anchor and nursing a broken heart, Lidan steels herself for a task she never thought would fall to her—to hunt down the architect of the horrors that have plagued the South Lands for years.
Ranoth stands on a precipice, his plans in tatters. The path forward leads as easily home as to death. Hungry for answers, he and Lidan set out in pursuit of a common enemy, for dark and fathomless powers are moving beneath the surface of Coraidin.
The unseen realms have awoken and within them, ancient feuds flare to life.
A new and deadly threat looms, and an old bargain will be struck anew. Will Lidan and Ran survive the coming storm to finish what they have begun?
Empire of Shadows finishes off the series that already includes Blood of Heirs and Legacy of Ghosts. And its cover is going to look amazing next to these two beauties!
Okay, I’ve made you wait long enough. Now for the cover reveal!
The fiery flames of magic bursting from the crystal ball highlight the flowing red hair of the woman holding it. In her other hand she wields a staff, while ominous dark smoke coils up from her feet. This cover stands at the end of a battle between the forces of light and dark and it’s glowing cover give us hope that the light will win out in the end. But will it? I certainly hope so…
But either way Pen Astridge has put together another beautiful piece, and Empire of Shadows‘ cover is a stunning edition and a fitting close to Wanstall-Burke’s fantastic trilogy.
Empire of Shadows is due out in January of 2022! You can get more information on this and the rest of The Coraidic Sagas on the author’s website and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
Geoff Matthews
Julia Kitvaria Sarene