Posts Tagged ‘The Forsaken Lands’

Cover Launch: The Dagger’s Path

We’re proud to share this gorgeous cover from designer Hannah Wood and artist Steve Stone today! THE DAGGER’S PATH is Glenda Larke’s newest epic fantasy, the superb sequel to THE LASCAR’S DAGGER (UK|US|ANZ).

The Dagger's Path

THEY FOLLOW WHERE THE DAGGER LEADS

When sailors came to Ardhi’s island home, they plundered not only its riches, but its magic too. Now Ardhi must retrieve what was stolen, but there are ruthless men after this power, men who will do anything to possess it . . .

Sorcerers, lascars, pirates and thieves collide in this thrilling sequel to Glenda Larke’s epic fantasy adventure, THE LASCAR’S DAGGER.

‘Outstanding all the way to the last word.’ – Elizabeth Moon on The Lascar’s Dagger

‘If you don’t read Glenda Larke you’re missing out on a treat’ – Karen Miller

 

Glenda Larke: An Alien and a Lascar’s Dagger

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Glenda Larke’s exciting new epic fantasy novel, THE LASCAR’S DAGGER, came out just last week. It is a tale of spying, of action and adventure in an unfamiliar land.

I was 21 years old when I discovered what it was like to be an alien.

I had just landed in a strange country at night, then was driven along dark country roads with rubber trees meeting overhead. Near our village destination, a coconut tree had fallen across the power lines, so when I met my husband’s parents for the first time, along with his brother and five sisters, it was by the flickering light of tiny coconut-oil lamps.

I soon discovered that my meagre knowledge of formal, grammatical Malay was about as much use in his village as a meagre knowledge of Oxford English would be to someone hearing Geordie dialect for the first time. The matriarchal society that was my husband’s by birth still used the Sumatran dialect they’d brought with them from Indonesia centuries earlier. I barely understood a word. At that point, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of not belonging, of being way out of my comfort zone.

As lovely as my in-laws were, I learned then, and in the years that followed, how challenging it is to be the stranger, the outsider. And as if that first total immersion by lamplight wasn’t enough, I did it again, repeatedly — living for years not only in west Malaysia, but also in Austria, in Tunisia, in Borneo. I had to learn the same tough lesson over and over, which was this: those around me weren’t weird. I was. It’s always the stranger who’s the alien.

It might have been a challenge for me to adapt, but it was also wonderful — a fascinating learning curve that never ended. No wonder, then, that I am intrigued by protagonists who are flung into unfamiliar worlds they don’t quite understand . . .

Like the lascar, for example, one of the protagonists in my new epic fantasy novel, THE LASCAR’S DAGGER, Book One of The Forsaken Lands. He is friendless and alone, half a world away from the place of his birth, learning to survive in a country where people dismiss his half of the globe as “forsaken”, that is, forsaken even by God. Or like Saker, the priest, reluctantly thrust into life at a royal court when he’d much rather lead a life of action. Or Lady Mathilda, a royal who must marry a man she doesn’t know and move to a foreign land for reasons of State. Or Sorrel Redwing, on the run from the law, learning to live in disguise as a servant. All are characters way out of their comfort zone.

Of all of them, the lascar has the hardest task because he’s the furthest away from all that is familiar. But then, he also has a very special dagger, or kris . . .

My husband wore a Malay kris the day we were married, tucked into the waist of his national costume like the warriors of a bygone era. The traditional form of the kris, usually with a wavy blade, is crafted from iron and meteorite nickel. Part of its mythos is the belief in a presence of a spirit (whether for good or evil) within the blade. Just as the kris in legend often possesses supernatural power or ability, so it is with the lascar’s dagger of my novel. Just what it’s up to is quite another matter, and for that, you’ll have to read the book.

The Lascar’s Dagger: What is a Lascar?

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With her brand new epic fantasy adventure THE LASCAR’S DAGGER out today, we asked Glenda to tell us a bit about the book and the story behind that title.

“What’s your book about?” It’s a question dreaded by every fantasy author.

After all, what if Tolkien had said, “A company of little guys with hairy feet who go on a long journey to throw a ring into some molten rock under a mountain…”  Would you have bought the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

With my latest book – THE LASCAR’S DAGGER – I discovered a new problem.

“What’s your book about?”

“A lascar, and the spice trade and –”

“Alaska? Really?” (At which point I am on the receiving end of a peculiar look.) “I didn’t know they had a spice trade! And have you even been to Alaska?”

Er, no.

So I usually end up telling people about lascars instead.

The word ‘lascar’ rather carelessly bundles together men of many different nationalities. The only thing they had in common was that they were south Asians who worked for Europeans. They could come from any country from Yemen to Indonesia. They were mostly sailors, although sometimes the term was applied to the servants of British army officers. Generally, they were worked hard and were poorly paid.

Possibly the very first lascar was an Indian who sailed with Vasco da Gama in 1498. By 1660, they were so common on board British ships that the British Government enacted a law to limit their employment to no more than 25% of the crew. By the First World War, there were over fifty thousand lascars actually resident in Britain; lascars were in fact the first wave of Asian migrants.

But THE LASCAR’S DAGGER is not just about a man and his knife. It’s about a western civilization on the cusp of change as it comes into conflict with cultures on the other side of the globe. It’s about ambition and greed and the spice trade. It’s a fantasy, set in a world that never existed, but which evokes a time when Asia and Europe were on a collision course. In our world, Asia lost, and most countries ended up under colonial rule. In my world … there may be a different ending.

The cast of my trilogy is large and varied: clerics and royalty, merchants and servants, assassins and beggars, a lawyer, a prince, a privateer and a woman wanted for murder … and more importantly, there’s the lascar — and his blade.

The lascar’s dagger is, in fact, a character too, one that can manipulate events. After all, I write fantasy and there’s got to be magic, right? Better still, with magic, perhaps one can change the course of history.

Launching the cover: THE LASCAR’S DAGGER

Coming March 2014, from the author of the Stormlord trilogy . . .

cover for fantasy novel The Lascar's Dagger by Glenda Larke - shows hooded figure holding dagger

FAITH WILL NOT SAVE HIM.

Saker looks like a simple priest, but in truth he’s a spy for the head of his faith. It’s a dangerous job, and more lives than merely his own depend on his secrecy.

When Saker is wounded by a Lascar sailor’s blade, the weapon seems to follow him home. Unable to discard it, nor the sense of responsibility that comes with it, Saker can only follow its lead.

It will put him on a journey to strange shores, on a path that will reveal terrible secrets about the empire, about the people he serves, and likely lead to his own destruction. The Lascar’s dagger demands a price, and that price will be paid in blood. 

THE LASCAR’S DAGGER is the first book in The Forsaken Lands – a brand new epic fantasy trilogy from Glenda Larke, full of scheming, spying, action and adventure.

See what Glenda has to say about the inspiration behind this exciting new series here:

        “One of the wedding presents given to my husband and me was a hand-crafted Malay dagger, and it was on my wedding day that I was first told that a mystical spirit inhabits the blade of a kris…

         I lived in Southeast Asia for thirty years, and during that time I stayed and worked in places as diverse as sprawling Asian cities, coral atolls, logging camps, mangroves, peat swamps and tropical forests. In the field, as part of my ornithological work, I saw the intricate dance and heard the glorious songs of some of the most beautiful birds on Earth. Meanwhile, in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, I learned about Asian spices.

         Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that I should one day turn to birds of paradise, and to the real magic of spices, and to the spirit of the Malay kris to inspire a book. Yet, always, there was also a reluctance to use material that was not mine by birth.

         In the end, I have woven the European origins of my family with the Indonesian origins of my husband’s ancestry to create a place of my imagination, a place evocative of the 18th century and the spice trade that led Europeans to Indonesia. Along the way, I have paid homage to another family connection of mine, the Master’s Mate who strode the decks of Captain Cook’s Endeavour when it sailed through the Indonesian archipelago in the 1770s.

         But that’s all background. THE LASCAR’S DAGGER is really a story of honour, love and courage; a tale about men and women who like power too much, and those who would challenge them. It’s about ordinary people struggling to make sense of the world when they are thrown out of their comfort zone. And in this world of theirs, when cultures clash, so does their magic!”

~ Glenda Larke