The Bleikovat Event - The Cairns of Sainctuarie
by Hawk MacKinney
Hawk
MacKinney is awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via
rafflecopter during the tour.
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BLURB:
Among the close-kin clans of western rural Malfesian Murians, farming
and gelf ranches are long held traditions. Times are good…full barns, fat gelf calves and large
families thrive among the sprawling grain fields and hamlets and the river from
which they derive their name—the Feldon.
Word comes with the trade caravans that times are not so good in the
regions far to the east of the Feldon River: tumultuous changes stir among the remote province of
Bleikovia. Old timer Feldovats
shrug it off as one more squabble between clans over boundaries or water
rights…too distant to affect the Feldovats.
The
western clans learn too late, however, it is no local squabble. Outnumbered and unprepared, Feldovats
resist a hoard bent on plunder and conquest. Days of battle along the Feldon River stain the riverbanks
in green Murian blood. In the
finals days of exhausted fighting, Judikar Klarvko Celo, leader of the Clan
Klarvkon and the Feldovats, is fatally stabbed with the slow-acting sevon
poison. The Judikar’s consort,
Etikaa Klarvkaa, becomes Regentkaa, and with Celovat Field Commander Korvo Celo
serving as her advisor, she leads the demoralized Feldovat survivors on a gruesome
ill-prepared winter trek through high mountain passes of ice and blizzard snow
in an attempt to elude the Green Dragon forces of the Bleikovats.
Etkaa’s
only son, Klarvko Celo II, helps spirit Feldovat young across a remote mountain
exodus to the west toward Eedov Province. The battered, starving Feldovats
reach the Malfesian coast at Eedov City only to be confronted with their
implacable enemy determined to destroy the remaining Klarvkon rabble. Taking passage on crowded lumbering
Maalonovion freighters, Feldovats and Malfesian refugees set sail. On arrival in Maalon City they are
welcomed among their Maalon hosts, and settle into a new life.
But
famine and a pandemic pestilence stir old hates and nurse former
ambitions. The enraged Overseers of
Bleikovia move against the Klarvkons, this time bringing bloodshed to
Maalonovia. The exiles from the
Feldon must fight once again, but starvation and plague across the Planete Myr
make it a different war from the battles along the Feldon…a na’ä blikovat…the
Bleikovvat Phenomenon…an event with unexpected consequences and outcomes none
could have foreseen.
Before
the vendetta killing is exhausted, the Regentkaa Klarvkaa and her son are swept
onto the Maalon throne, setting the Klarvkon Dynasty and the Murians toward an
intergalactic golden age, and a star-flung destiny the once-agrarian Feldovats
could never have envisaged.
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EXCERPT
The catafalque of the old Dowager Queen rested on
the high rostrum of the Temple of the Goddess Myraa. There was little ceremony
to the cremation of dead. Yet, all that had passed made this requiem for the
Dowager Queen Klarvkaa Etkaa Bremanova Celovaa Bremanova a symbol of the
changes which had swept so many lives. Long annuals before the ascendancy of
The Klarvkon Dynasty, the massive wood and granite Temple to the Goddess Myraa
had been destroyed in the firestorm which laid waste Eedov City. After the
close of the Malfesian War the temple was rebuilt, but not the city. On the
ashes of the old temple, immense columns rose above the sanctuary and vaults.
Iridescent alabaster and polished marble greeted pilgrim supplicants who had
come to the shoreline plains washed by the Green Sea.
Dowager Etkaa Klarvkaa—wife, myäat, founding
matriarch of the Klarvkon Dynasty—gave hope from a time without hope. As was
her wish, she would be cremated on the soil of her birth, her ashes to mingle
with those of her consort, Klarvko Celo. Their son, His Imperial Majesty Klarvko
Celo the Second, decreed it would be done. At the enormous base of the great
temple in a spectacular vision never seen before and seldom since came an
undulating ocean of banners. Some of them clans which no longer existed, even
the once-hated Green Dragon of Bleikovia. Murians had taken her to their hearts
and never relinquished her. Even in death, her shadow would reach across the
centuries, and measure all who followed.
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AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
With
postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities,
Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and
Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate
neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.
Hawk
began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction,
historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not
genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing
in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated
for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction
and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial
protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Vault of Secrets, the first
book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold,
and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Walking the Pet is Hawk’s latest
release in the Ingram series. The first book in another mystery-thriller series
is scheduled for release in 2015. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The
Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012. Its sequel,
The Missing Planets, has just been released.
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Visit the other blogs on the tour for additional chances to win.
May 11: Unabridged Andra's
May 11: Room With Books
May 12: CBY Book Club
May 13: Romorror Fan Girl
May 14: Hope. Dreams. Life... Love
May 14: Dina Rae's Write Stuff
May 15: Lilac Reviews
May 18: fuonlyknew
May 19: Tina Donahue
May 20: Mixed Book Bag
May 21: Queen of All She Reads
May 22: Romance That's 'Out Of This World'
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