Booklog 10/2022: Jacey Bedford: The Amber Crown

[jacey]

Is it weird to read and review your own book? Just so you know that this review is biased because I know what went into the writing of The Amber Crown.

I wanted to write a character-driven fantasy with a more unusual background than a generic medievaloid setting, so I set this in a fantasy version of the Baltic States in the 1600s. My fictioinal country of Zavonia is approximately where Latvia and Lithuania live today. It's beset by ambitious neighbours but it's holding its own under the enlightened King Konstantyn, that is until he's assassinated. (That's not a spoiler, it happens on the first page.)

My three viewpoint characters, Valdas, the king's (failed) bodyguard, Mirza, the witch-healer of a Landstrider band, and Lind, the clever assassin who sets off the whole sorry tale in the first place, start out separately but come together in an attempt to set things right before Zavonia is embroiled in a war on two fronts which it cannot win.

So what can you expect? There's peril, sex, a bit of gore, whorehouses, itinerant Landstriders, one harrowing backstory, magic of two different kinds, a cranky horse with long ears, a massive knock-down-drag-out fight, cavalry with wings, a particularly smelly corpse... and cabbage. The cast is diverse with backstories that shape their actions.

I hope you like it. Happy to answer questions.

 

 

Comments

[cmcmck]

I have connections with Latvia (sad connections, but connections even so) as you know so I'll have to read this! :o)

[jacey]

I hope you like it.

[sartorias]

I've started it--it's wonderful!

[jacey]

Oh, that's lovely. Thank you. If you wouldn't mind dropping a review on Amazon, I'd be grateful. Even if you only put those 6 words on there. :-) I'm trying to push the number of reviews up to 50 if at all possible because apparently it makes a differenmce to the algorithms that means your book gets put in front of more people.