The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy #1)
Jen Williams
About Jen Williams
JEN WILLIAMS lives in London with her partner and her cat. She started writing about pirates and dragons as a young girl and has never stopped. Her short stories have featured in numerous anthologies and she was nominated for Best Newcomer in the 2015 British Fantasy Awards. The Ninth Rain is the first novel in a brand-new trilogy from Jen, following on from The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost, and The Silver Tide in her highly acclaimed Copper Cat trilogy.
About the Book
The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces – talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
When eccentric explorer, Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon, offers him employment, he sees an easy way out. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, the prospect of facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts is preferable to the abomination he left behind.
But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure’lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall . . .
By Jen Williams and available from Headline
The Copper Cat Trilogy
The Copper Promise
The Iron Ghost
The Silver Tide
Sorrow’s Isle (digital short story)
The Winnowing Flame Trilogy
The Ninth Rain
Praise for Jen Williams’ Copper Cat Trilogy:
‘A fresh take on classic tropes . . . 21st century fantasy at its best’
SFX magazine
‘A highly inventive, vibrant high fantasy with a cast you can care about . . . There is never a dull moment’
British Fantasy Society
‘Williams has thrown out the rulebook and injected a fun tone into epic fantasy without lightening or watering down the excitement and adventure . . . Highly recommended’
Independent
‘A fast-paced and original new voice in heroic fantasy’
Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Expect dead gods, mad magic, piracy on the high seas, peculiar turns and pure fantasy fun’
Starburst magazine ‘Absolutely stuffed with ghoulish action. There is never a dull page’
SciFiNow
‘An enthralling adventure’
Sci-Fi Bulletin
‘An utterly outstanding and thrilling ride’
www.brizzlelassbooks.wordpress.com ‘I’ve loved every minute of this story’
www.overtheeffingrainbow.co.uk ‘If only all fantasy was as addictive as this’
www.theeloquentpage.co.uk
‘Just as magical, just as action packed, just as clever and just as much fun as its predecessor . . . You’ll find a great deal to enjoy here’
www.fantasy-faction.com
‘Atmospheric and vivid . . . with a rich history and mythology and colourful, well-written and complex characters, that all combine to suck you in to the world and keep you enchanted up until the very last page’
www.realitysabore.blogspot.co.uk ‘A wonderful sword and sorcery novel with some very memorable characters and a dragon to boot. If you enjoy full-throttle action, awesome monsters, and fun, snarky dialogues then The Copper Promise is definitely a story you won’t want to miss’
www.afantasticallibrarian.com ‘The Copper Promise is dark, often bloody, frequently frightening, but there’s also bucket loads of camaraderie, sarcasm, and an unashamed love of fantasy and the fantastic’
Den Patrick, author of The Boy with the Porcelain Blade
‘The characterisation is second to none, and there are some great new innovations and interesting reworkings of old tropes . . . This book may have been based on the promise of copper but it delivers gold’
Quicksilver on Goodreads
‘It is a killer of a fantasy novel that is indicative of how the classic genre of sword and sorcery is not only still very much alive, but also still the best the genre has to offer’
www.leocristea.wordpress.com
For Paul
(known to most as Wills)
With love from
Your skin & blister
You ask me to start at the beginning, Marin, my dear, but you do not know what you ask. Beginnings are very elusive things, almost as elusive as true endings. Where do I start? How to unpick a tapestry such as this? There was a thread that started it all, of course, but I will have to go back a good long way; beyond the scope of your young life, beyond the scope of even mine. Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
Extract from the private letters of Master Marin de Grazon, from Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Prologue
Two hundred years ago
‘Will we get into trouble?’
Hestillion took hold of the boy’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. When he looked up at her, his eyes were wide and glassy – he was afraid. The few humans who came to Ebora generally were. She favoured him with a smile and they walked a little faster down the echoing corridor. To either side of them enormous oil paintings hung on the walls, dusty and grey. A few of them had been covered with sheets, like corpses.
‘Of course not, Louis. You are with me, aren’t you? I can go anywhere in the palace I like, and you are my friend.’
‘I’ve heard that people can go mad, just looking at it.’ He paused, as if sensing that he might have said something wrong. ‘Not Eborans, I mean. Other people, from outside.’
Hestillion smiled again, more genuinely this time. She had sensed this from the delegates’ dreams. Ygseril sat at the centre of their night wanderings, usually unseen but always there, his roots creeping in at the corners. They were all afraid of him: bad dreams conjured by thousands of years’ worth of the stories and rumours. Hestillion had kept herself carefully hidden while exploring their nightmares. Humans did not care for the Eboran art of dream-walking.