Mora’s Book Spotlight: showcasing new releases by Croatian authors in English
Ghost Apparent, Jelena Dunato (published: September 24th, 2024)
Genre: dark fantasy
Length: 111 pages
Tagline: murder, rebellion and lethal verse under the Adriatic sun
Description: Betrayed, deposed and presumed dead.
When her father is killed in a bloody coup and her uncle seizes the city, Orsiana pleads for help with the only power still willing to listen, unaware that the gods will use her as a pawn in their own game.
Thrown back on the streets of Abia, armed with the gods’ double-edged gifts, Orsiana must thwart her uncle’s plans and learn what it takes to rule a proud, stubborn city that thrives on artifice and wit. She will plot, fight and use lethally tuned verse to stir a rebellion. But just when her uncle’s Machiavellian schemes start to topple, a new player will enter the game, and the gods will raise the stakes. It’s easy to fight an enemy you hate, but how about an enemy you fall in love with? If she wants to win, Orsiana will have to risk the last precious thing in her possession: her heart.
A story of revenge and recovery, Ghost Apparent blends the history and folklore of the Eastern Adriatic with the bloody treachery of the Renaissance courts and is a perfect read for the fans of dark political fantasy.
https://books2read.com/u/4A1Wxk
Excerpt:
The villa is an architectural jewel set on a cushion of lush greenery. When Orsiana and her father enter the walled garden, the sounds and scents of the city fall away and the fragrance of the exotic flowers cascading from the branches engulfs them. A long, winding path leads to the front porch. As they walk, the gravel crunches gently beneath their feet and colourful parrots screech their agitated greetings from the treetops. They might as well be in some foreign place, an exotic island in the south, where fruit tastes unfamiliar and every bright creature is venomous.
Uncle Caril waits at the foot of the staircase, resplendent in crimson silk like a puffed-up firebird, flanked by his twin sons, the two fair, gangly boys Orsiana can never tell apart. Several distant relatives and a few prominent patricians, the members of her father’s Great Council, crowd around them.
“Surprise.” Caril opens his arms, welcoming his brother. “Happy birthday.”
They embrace, Caril ostentatious, Orsiana’s father stiff and puzzled by this display.
Caril then turns to her. “Little Orsiana.”
“Uncle.” She deftly avoids his hug, for she hates to be touched. She’s good at reading people’s moods, and Caril’s cordiality seems strained, as cloying as his alien plants. “Where is Aunt Roselia? And the girls?”
“Waiting for you inside. Go ahead, we’ll follow you in a minute.”
She exchanges a brief glance with her father, who shrugs and motions her to go as Caril takes his arm and whispers something in his ear. Six white marble steps lead up to the arched porch with tall, slender columns. Orsiana climbs them slowly, the air before her thick and heavy like syrup. The open door beckons, the bright light and female voices pouring out, but the night tugs at her back. The breeze touches the nape of her neck with its cold fingers like a memory of a bad dream, of frozen earth and deep, dark water.
She shivers. For the first time in her life, the premonition of danger seems absolutely clear, the wrongness of the world obvious.
“Father?” She turns at the top of the stairs, baffled, just in time to see the men gathering around him, the gleam of the first blade slashing through the air and Lord Orsolo collapsing with a cry, blood spurting on the white gravel.
Orsiana screams and the sound slices the night in half, to the possible and impossible, to reality and nightmare. Her legs move by themselves as the men fall on her father like beasts, stabbing, stabbing. The scene is unreal, a rogue shard of broken time, a divine mistake when the gods turned their eyes away and something evil slipped in and took over.
She runs to her father, or she tries to, but rough hands pull her back, and a sweaty palm covers her mouth, cutting off her scream. She kicks her legs in vain, struggling for breath. One of her cousins turns away from her father, staring at her in an intoxicated haze of carnage, his eyes filled with death.
And then it’s over; the deed is done and the hands release her. She falls on her father’s body, still warm, lying in a widening pool of blood. His eyes are open, his crimson-smeared teeth bared. The beautiful grey silk on his chest is shredded to pieces, soaked in blood, destroyed beyond recognition.
The murderers stand in a silent circle, their blades dripping, their eyes avoiding the scene, like boys caught in mischief. They suddenly seem ashamed and nauseated, breathing through their mouths, their faces tinged green. The metallic stench of slaughter permeates the air.
Orsiana wails like a wounded animal, unable to articulate her pain and horror, unable to call for help or divine justice. The sound is primal, inhuman, and the men back away from her, as if she were the mad, bloodthirsty monster. For a heartbeat, her fury blazes so hot she feels she could grow claws and tear them to ribbons of raw flesh, but then someone pulls a sack over her head, a thick, black velvet cloth that cuts off the light, and chokes her into silence.
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