We’ve drawn up a quiz based around the number 7 – lucky for some – to celebrate the release of the epic fantasy Seven Princes (UK | US | ANZ) by John R. Fultz.
Find out if the number 7 is lucky for you by taking the quiz below.
There’s something strange about the number 7.
Something mystical. Something downright magical.
Looking back through history, literature, religion, and philosophy, one can see this number coming up again and again – usually with a significant aspect invoking holiness, mystery, power or prosperity.
A few examples:
– In Buddhist mythology the newborn Buddha took seven steps right after he was born, declaring “I alone am the World-Honored One.”
– In Christian mythology the Walls of Jericho fell seven days after seven priests marched around the city seven times with seven trumpets.
– In Islamic mythology there are seven heavens and seven hells. (more…)
Today is a momentous day. It is not only the first day of 2012, but it also marks the beginning of our Seven Days for SEVEN PRINCES feature. To celebrate the release of this fantasy adventure of epic proportions we’re going to be going 7-crazy on all of our Orbit channels for a whole seven days. Look out for the number 7 to find competitions, quizzes, giveaways and behind-the-scenes insights from the author. It’s one hell of a week for one hell of a book.
From author John R. Fultz, this debut fantasy novel wowed us here at Orbit and we’re just itching to bring it to the world. A tale where men and giants walk side-by-side, where ancient necromancers make a bid for power with chilling sorcery, where ordinary men do battle with monstrous creatures.
It’s a breakneck-paced, breathtaking adventure that’s unashamedly enjoyable and impossible to put down. With an entrancing fairy tale feel, this book really made us sit up and take notice – and it also showed us that John has a very exciting future ahead of him.
To see what we’re getting excited about, have an exclusive read of the prologue right here, and keep an eye out for all things 7 . . .
So what’s your book about?
Is there any more difficult question for an author to answer? I know I have a hard time with this one. After spending so much time (often years) crafting a novel, living inside the souls of your characters, building the intricate world in which they live, overseeing the progress of an invented history and chronicling the fictional exploits of your literary “children”, it’s hard to encapsulate all the diverse threads of a novel into a single statement.
Yet the market demands a “hook” or “premise” on which any novel can hang its metaphorical hat. After all, if readers don’t know what to expect, why should they even buy the book? Blind faith? Hardly. Word of mouth? Well, that’s the best advertising you can get . . . but consider the irony. If you as the author don’t come up with a satisfying answer to “What’s your book about?” then your early readers and reviewers are going to do it FOR YOU. They’re going to summarize, encapsulate and foreshorten your Massive Undertaking of Artistic Purity to a description worthy of a sound-byte (or at least a Facebook update). So authors are better-off coming up with their own answer to this big question, rather than leaving it up to somebody else to explain.
All of this begs the question: “What is SEVEN PRINCES about?”
If you look at the cover text, SEVEN PRINCES is about war. “An age of legends. An age of heroes. An age of war.” Now that’s a great tag line. It’s engaging, evocative, and it rings with mythic resonance. Ready for more irony?
Here’s the thing: I never considered this book a “war novel” when I was writing it. Yet war itself is definitely one of the themes that drives the characters and the plot. Some characters want to prevent war—they know the red tragedy and the pointless slaughter that it brings—while others actively seek war to prove themselves, to avenge wrongs, or simply as a means of grabbing power. So the concept of war itself is definitely buried in there. There’s even a conversation at one point between two characters who argue about the essential nature of Man as a war-like being. Is Mankind capable of living in peace—true peace—for long? That’s a question that also lies at the heart of SEVEN PRINCES. So yeah, it’s about war. But it’s also about a lot more . . . (more…)
