It’s the weekend, and that means it’s time for another reveal from my upcoming epic fantasy, We Gather.
I was thinking a lot about the ancient world when I began this series, and I wanted to convey a sense of antiquity, of living within history. Do you know Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the cellphone than the construction of the pyramids? Give that staggering fact a moment to percolate.
The world of We isn’t necessarily older than ours, but history hasn’t been interrupted so severely that it gives people a sense of discontinuity with their past. There’s a feeling of connection even to weathered monuments they can’t read anymore. Some of our narrators hail from lands on the fringes of the empire, younger, fresher, with a different perspective.
The Barrachite Empire, though, defines longevity. Its people claim their civilization is as old as the world, and if there are those who doubt that, no one can prove it isn’t true. Barracheh has grown docile and peaceable; it’s hard to look at them and see the conquerors they used to be. It’s not clear they are those people anymore, or want to be.
As for what they will become at the end of the catastrophic change that’s coming, that may depend on who gets to decide.
This is the first installment in a series, which means you’ll be meeting a lot of characters for the first time. The young Barrachite Bayam kicks the story off, and his narrative plunges the reader headlong into turmoil without a lot of context. Multiple reversals of fortune as shocking to Bayam as they will be to you.
You see, the kid has a secret, and the real problem is, he isn’t in on it.
“BAYAM: A youth in his late teens, tall and willowy, black hair clipped off at the scalp with blunt-force simplicity. That austere haircut is played out in his downcast eyes and simple garments, lacking in ornamentation of any kind, and his feet are bare, but both ears bear a wealth of jewelry, precious-metal rings and jeweled pins. There’s something haughty in his high-boned cheeks that clashes with his inward-drawing stance; it’s hard to make sense of him, especially since he will not look at you. Still, it seems unlikely that his face would be so blank, were he not thinking many things he cannot share.”
We Gather, M.C. Burnell
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