Against the Wind by Darren Askins

Love Book Tours is on tour with Darren Askins and his debut novel, Against the Wind. This fantasy book was released in October and is book one in the Broken Leyweaver Cycle series. Darren has had a passion for writing since he discovered Harry Potter at the age of 6. Please enjoy this excerpt before you start reading the book.

About the Book:

The mighty and world-spanning Gaelagan Empire has forgotten many things. It’s forgotten the town of Giblarn, nestled in the roots of the Mandrorol Swamp. It’s forgotten that there are secrets buried there which can promise eternal life, or eternal suffering. And finally, it’s forgotten that it’s not the mightiest power that the world has ever seen.

Duvont Jessen is about to learn just how much the Empire has forgotten, being overlooked himself, as he continues his life as a slave two years after he should have been freed. Desperate to escape servitude, he apprentices himself to a strange man who claims to be a seeker of secrets and can command the wind with but a whisper.

They must find a path together, where no one has tread before, save for those who guard the secrets of life and death. And, as it turns out, they aren’t the only ones hiding the truth. To survive and save those Duvont still cares for, he must learn who is lying about their secrets, elsewise, he too will be forgotten.

 

Excerpt:

How could it have been my responsibility to save the world? I was simply a mere historian. And like all good historians, the past wove around me like a collection of stories crying out for guidance. It was a puzzle that I needed to solve, if my people were going to survive. The screen showed me, in visual detail, the different eons that had passed in this part of the world. Though I was more fascinated with the passing sky than anything living under it, I came to accept certain truths about the swamp’s death.

Because it did die. All the green eventually faded into brown waste. And that brown waste rotted into nothing but the ashen waste we were familiar with.

After each time I watched the recording, I then rewound it, searching for the catalyst of this destruction. And then I was sure I had it, in a man collapsing to the ground with a cheek full of blood, having been punched several times by several different hands. A tavern emptied as its denizens made their stand.

It was a still night, and the breeze seemed to have forgotten this out-of-the-way town. An astute pair of eyes, like my own, would have noticed that it did not blow against the riled townsfolk. It was too entranced by this bleeding man, covering himself from head to toe in robes of crimson, and it sought only to flutter around his feet and to press up against his legs, as if it were a newborn puppy seeking solace in its master.