email to order darkmuse (at) swordofshakespeare.com
$16.99 print $4.99 ebook
over 600 pages
a novel by Dean Michael Christian
The First Who Is Last...
More cryptic words that send Jareth on yet another quest. But he’s been promised; it is the last one. A daughter brought him faith when he most needed it, a son then gave him hope. Yet he’s not complete. This last quest will either see him home or finally bring ruin...Mortally wounded and lying on a field of Death the bard Jareth Rhylan is taken away by one of his two protectors; the Cervine lifts his spear-pierced body, passes by a son now drawn into the story. Revenge satiated, his other guardian, Leanan Sidhe––a daughter of myth, has left a bloody spike to pierce the earth in memory, and taken her dark presence from the man she loves.
Taryn lies in a coma while Beryl can’t stop the monitors of machines keeping her father alive from one by one blinking out.
On a frozen plain not of his making, the bard must find a way to rescue the third key to a story of which he no longer has control. He must enter into the land of the Snow Queen––an owl-masked being whose hatred for the man cannot be defined. It is an enmity that should have killed him long ago but the Cervine and Dark Muse are still at his side. It is a battle begun before the Invasion, a war before the War. As fear manifests into snow beasts and fractured mountains, into walls of song-murdering silence, is there any chance a house that used to be a home can stitch enough memories together and save them all?
Mara is a tale of desperate prisoners, of black swords and winged claws, of anger and forgiveness.
It’s a story only love can imagine and a bard could sing.
It’s the tale of Jareth Rhylan.