A Little Throwback Thursday eBook Shilling
So, Fifth Quarter, the second book in the Quarters quadrilogy, came out in ebook two days ago, on Tuesday, September 1st, and I forgot to mention it. Oops. Okay, yes, I retweeted a mention by my agent but that's not actually the same thing. Now, you don't get much more of a throwback than the ebook of a book that came out in mass market twenty odd years ago (and some of those years were very odd) so I thought I'd use today's thematic meme-ness to give new readers a small taste of both Sing the Four Quarters (book one, came out last month) and Fifth Quarter.
First, Sing:
“All right, Bard. This is where you float yer weight.” Sarlo hooked the sweep
oar into one armpit and gestured ahead with her free hand. “Got a whole stretch of
river here where the current spreads out and ain’t worth shit. Not to mention wind’s
comin’ northwest and’ll keep tryin’ to blow us onto the far shore. We get through it
slow and sure as a rule, but since I don’t want to end up with my butt caught in ice,
it’s all yers.”
Fingers clamped not quite white around the oar support, Annice peered off the
stern. The fantail following the riverboat was a deep gray-green; not exactly
friendly-looking water. Watching the bubbles slipping away upstream induced a
sudden wave of vertigo. Annice swallowed hard and sat down, legs crossed for
maximum support and eyes closed. Thanks to the innkeeper’s well-timed hunk of
bread, she’d discovered that small, bland meals at frequent intervals both remained
down and damped the nausea to merely an unpleasant background sensation.
Unfortunately, during the two days on the river, she’d found all sort of new ways to
make herself sick.
“You okay?”
Annice opened her eyes and decided she could cope. “I’m fine.”
“You seen a healer yet?”
“I’ll see one after I get to Elbasan.”
Sarlo snorted. “Yer business.”
Reaching under her jacket and sweater, Annice pulled out her flute, the
ironwood warmed almost to body temperature. When the kigh arrived she’d Sing,
but first she had to get their attention.
“They’re gonna be deep with freeze-up so close,” Sarlo observed.
Annice ignored her, setting her fingers and checking the movement of the single
key. She took a deep breath and slowly released it, then lifted the flute to her mouth.
The kigh took their time responding to the call, but eventually three distinct
shapes became visible just below the surface.
Three would have to be enough.
Shoving chilled fingers and flute between her legs, Annice Sang. Some bards
argued that as long as the music was right and the desire strong, words were
unimportant; that the kigh didn’t understand the words anyway, so why tie rhyme
and rhythm into knots in what was probably an unnecessary attempt to Sing a
specific request. Personally, Annice preferred to repeat variations of short phrases
over and over. It occasionally got tedious, but it usually got results.
The kigh listened for a few moments, one lifting a swell two feet into the air the
better to stare intently at the source of the Song, then suddenly all three dove and the
boat jerked forward.
“Whoa!” Sarlo took a steadying step and braced herself against the sweep as
Annice let the Song fade to silence. “This’ll make us some time. How long do you
figger they’ll push for?”
Annice slumped forward. “Hard to say,” she admitted. “I haven’t actually asked
for much, so we might make it out of the slow stretch before they get bored.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll play them a gratitude and we’re back on our own.”
“They won’t hang around and cause trouble?”
“Probably not.…” A sudden gust of wind lifted the top off a wave and flung it
up over the high stern deck of the riverboat and into Annice’s face. The air kigh
flicked the last few drops off its fingers at her, then sped away.
“More kigh?” Sarlo asked.
“More kigh,” Annice sighed and pulled the sleeve of her sweater down to wipe
at the freezing water. “I’ve always been strongest in air, so they get jealous when I
Sing the others.”
“Sort of like being followed around by a bunch of obnoxious kids.”
“Worse.”
The pilot snorted. “You were never stuck on a riverboat with my right-out-ofthe-
Circle three.”
“Why didn’t you leave them with their father?”
“Couldn’t. He was my crew till he got knocked off and drowned.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? You weren’t the one what pushed him in.”
Annice didn’t care how unbardlike it was; she wasn’t going to ask, she didn’t
want to know.
And just in case you don't want to take my word for it:
“A favorite book means to me one you reread frequently and know you will enjoy
even with flu. Out of a shelf-full of such, the one my hand goes to most unerringly
is Tanya Huff’s SING THE FOUR QUARTERS. I love this book for being both
very funny and wholly serious about the elemental spirits and about justice, mercy,
love, kindness and honor. Above all, I love it for its accurate portrayal of exactly
how it feels to be pregnant. I don’t think this has been done in fantasy before.”
-Diana Wynne Jones for The Washing Post Book World
Second, Fifth:
“Well, Neegan …” The marshal leaned back in the folding camp chair and set
the empty flagon on the table with a sharp crack. “… second watch is nearly over
and still no sign of them.”
“Too early to relax, Marshal.” Commander Neegan’s whisper had been given
him many years before by an enemy archer. The commander had not only survived
the battle but seen to it that the archer did not.
Marshal Chela smiled, the expression bracketing the rounded curves of her face
with deep creases. “I never relax,” she said cheerfully. “It’s why I’ve lived to a ripe
old age.” She reached for the flagon, remembered it was empty, and sighed.
“There’s another bottle in that case behind you, Neegan. Get it, would you?”
“Allow me, Marshal.” In one lithe motion, Bannon rose to his feet, set the clay
bottle on the table, and lightly touched his blade to the commander’s neck, just by
the white pucker of the old scar.
Chela leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you removing the wrong
target?” she murmured.
Vree tapped the older woman gently on the shoulder and laid a line of steel
across her throat. “Don’t move,” she warned. “It’s very sharp.”
Apparently oblivious to the knife tip dimpling his skin, Neegan held out his
hand. “You owe me forty crescents, Marshal. I told you they could do it.”
And in case you still don't want to take my word for it:
“This isn’t fluff, and it isn’t light-but it has so much heart to leaven its dark
moments that is a someplace-that-isn’t here in which to find belief in redemption.”
-The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
No Quarter is out in October (and yes, that's the same month as An Ancient Peace, and yes, I am competing against myself... I think I can take me) and The Quartered Sea is out in November. If you're very good and I get my act together, there may be a small quarter of something around in December too.
This link not only takes you back to the many links that will take you to places where you can get the books but to a post that's a month old and therefore also a throwback and it's still Thursday (even though lj ate this post once already) and I'm so rocking this theme thing.