Today I'm pleased to welcome Melissa Douthit to my blog today with her blog tour stop for The Firelight of Maalda-Book 2 in the
Legend of the RaieChaelia.
I've read both Prequels and am now working on Book 1. Stay tuned for the review of these.
Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoy what you read here.
Excerpt
from The Firelight of Maalda,
chapter: The Secret of Portalis,
pages 88-89:
“It’s clever,” she remarked.
“No, it’s scientific,” Aemis said expertly as he turned back
to his workbench.
Dekkar rolled his eyes.
“Ever since I explained that word to him, he keeps using it,” he
whispered to Ben.
Jeremiah snorted. “You
should feel special,” he said. “Before
this, everything was ‘ingenious.’”
Chalice glanced over to see if Aemis had heard but he didn’t
seem to be paying attention. He was too
engrossed in his work. What a strange character, she
thought. She turned to Dekkar. “What is scient … I don’t even know what he
said.”
“Scientific. It is an
adjective meant to describe something that is characterized by the methods and
principles of science.”
“Uh, okay … what is science?”
Chalice didn’t mean to sound rude but it was almost as if Dekkar was
speaking a different language.
“Science is a word our ancestors defined as the study of the
structure and behavior of the physical world through observations and
experiment,” he said and she cocked an eyebrow as to say: Huh? “In other words,
Chalice, it was their way understanding the world and how it worked, breaking
it down into finite pieces, observing those pieces in experimentation and
examining the results in terms of cause and effect. By doing this, they believed they could
control their surroundings, or become gods of their own world so to speak, and
although their capacity for rational thought was exceptional, it limited their
worldview.”
I’ve had several people ask me
what the book’s blurb means: A story that
unites the real with the fantastical and turns science into magic.
So, how does it unite the real
with the fantastical? Those who have
read the first book, The Raie’Chaelia,
have been calling the story an epic fantasy, or a high fantasy, comparing it to
Jordan’s or Tolkien’s world, but it is neither.
It is not an epic fantasy but rather a futuristic fantasy set in this
world. This becomes apparent in The Firelight of Maalda, when Chalice
and Jeremiah visit the Archive in the chapter called The Secret of Portalis. The
second book touches upon themes that are really related to our world and the
problems in it. These themes are the
reason why I began writing the trilogy in the first place. I wanted to see if it was possible to take
the harsh realities of our world and juxtapose them with problems in a
fantastical world. I wondered: How would the heroine and hero react to
problems and dangers that are real for us today? How would it compare with their own problems
in their world? Would it be just as
frightening?
How does it turn science into
magic? Throughout the book, the reader
will hear echoes of modern science, or more accurately modern physics. For those who have studied it, particularly
the theories laid out by Albert Einstein and more recently, Edward Witten, they
understand that modern physics has really gone beyond the circle of empirical
science into the realms of philosophy and religion, even the fantastical,
giving it a magical quality. Therefore,
it was easy to use the principles laid out by these theories as magic in the
story.
But, in my humble opinion,
this story is first and foremost a story of love, where the heroine has to
choose between doing her duty for her people and following her heart. The two main characters, Chalice and
Jeremiah, knew each other as children.
When they meet again, they remember the friendship they shared as kids. It begins to grow and blossom into something
stronger throughout the first book, coming to fruition at the end. In so many other YA stories I’ve read, a
meet-cute is usually between two strangers who fall in love, but I wanted this
one to be different. The Vanishing, a prequel to book one, is
particularly romantic because Jeremiah feels something deep down, something
missing from his life that he describes as a hole in his chest, and then
finally learns what it is when he sees her again. That is, his heart remembers (The Vanishing, page 51):
She studied him for a moment and then,
suddenly, her face lit up in recognition. “Oh my gosh, no, I do remember!” she
exclaimed. “Jeremiah?!” she asked and he nodded. “Jeremiah Maehbeck! How could
I have forgotten?!”
He smiled as she said the words and
caught a twinkle of joy in her eye at seeing him again. Then he suddenly
realized what had been missing in his life this whole time. After all these
years, he finally understood the emptiness inside of him and realized what
could fill it – the only thing that could fill it. It was her.
Contest for Free Kindle:
Enter
a drawing and win a free Kindle by answering the following question:
What
is Chalice’ internal struggle?
To
answer the question go to this link and fill in the information (place answer
in Message field):
Contest
ends March 10, 2012. Winner will be announced March 11th on Melissa
Douthit's Blog.
The Firelight of Maalda on
Amazon and B&N:
B&N:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-firelight-of-maalda-melissa-douthit/1108346111?ean=2940013707153
Book One and the Prequels are
free on Smashwords and Amazon:
Book One:
Prequels:
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