Welcome to my stop on the book blitz for A Necklace of Souls! Today I have the pleasure of introducing you all to Will - and don't forget to enter the giveaway! To follow the rest of the tour, click on the banner above.
A Necklace of Souls (SoulNecklace Stories #1)
Author: R.L. Stedman
Genre: YA FantasyRelease Date: December 19, 2014
339 pages
Description:
‘A true dream is when the events I see in my sleep have, or will happen. It’s a talent that runs in my family. I was thirteen when I had my first true dream.’
Will’s Aunt says the Kingdom of the Rose is the most fortunate of lands. But Will hates the place – his uncle and aunt are horrible, and he misses his parents. Oh, how he misses them.
Dana wishes she wasn’t a princess. She’s always being told how to behave, what to wear. There’s a strangeness in the castle – why will no one talk about the Guardian, or the necklace that protects the land? And why does her father look at her with such sorrow? The collier’s cart seems the perfect escape. Only she didn’t realize she’d become so dirty, or so lost. Fortunately this boy, Will, has a sense of direction. And next to the forbidding stranger, N’tombe, he seems reassuringly normal.
Welcome to A Necklace of Souls: a story of love and loss, of shattered lives and desperate hopes. In the Kingdom of the Rose, bravery is not always measured by strength and magic is real, if only one has the courage to dream.
Shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Award, A Necklace of Souls was awarded the Tessa Duder Award for Young Adult Fiction, Best First Book at the New Zealand Post Children and Young
Adult Book Awards and is a Storylines Notable Book.
Adult Book Awards and is a Storylines Notable Book.
Will was twelve years old when the plague began. Winter in North Wales is always a dreary, damp season, but that year seemed particularly harsh. The winds blew strong and cold and the people were reluctant to leave their homes. Will’s parents, the town bakers, still kept their shop open but now customers arrived singly, and said little while waiting for their bread.
As the plague spread, Will’s familiar world began to change. First, the school closed. Normally this might have been something to be celebrated. But not now, not with the town locked in fear, and no one going in or out. Then the fishing boats at the quayside didn’t sail, either. Eventually even the church shut its doors. But by then the plague had spread, growing like a big black cloud, until it seemed to smother all the light. And in the bakery Will and his parents lay ill, unable to move, unable even to think, as the world spun slowly about them.
Will didn’t remember much of the illness, just a vague recall of heat and burning and endless, heaving nausea. Like seasickness but far, far worse – the sort of seasickness you might feel if the ship on which you were sailing had suddenly caught alight. For days he tossed about, thrashing his head on his pillow, calling for Ma. For anyone. But no one came.
Finally Will woke and lay blinking at the ceiling. His throat felt thick and tight, as though he’d been screaming for the longest time. Outside the world sounded eerily quiet; no shop bells, no wagon wheels creaking. No horse’s hooves, or people calling to one another across the street. Only the distant wash of the waves and the creaking of the shop sign in the wind.
All his life, Will remembered the feeling of waking into silence, the bitter knowledge of his loneliness in a wide, wide world. Because after the plague, everything had changed.
I write mostly for children and young adults. In 2012 I won the Tessa Duder Award for an
unpublished YA work and my first novel, A Necklace of Souls, was published by HarperCollins in 2013 (available in the United Kingdom and on Book Depository from June 2015). This year, A Necklace of Souls was awarded Best First Book at the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards and won a Notable Book Award from Storylines. Inner Fire is my second novel.
Such a stunning cover & a most insightful Guest Post.
ReplyDeletethanks for hosting and for the excerpt. I like the the cover too
ReplyDeleteLove the cover
ReplyDelete