Jeri Smith-Ready

Introducing...The Reawakened!

On November 1, my Aspect of Crow fantasy trilogy, which began two years ago with Eyes of Crow and continued last year with Voice of Crow, will wrap up with the biggest, wildest installment of all, The Reawakened.

You can now read an excerpt or pre-order at Mysterious Galaxy, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

And look over there--the cover! It's my favorite ever. I actually screamed when I opened the envelope and saw the cover flats.

Speaking of cover flats, I have three to give away. I'll draw random names from commenters on this post at 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday, September 3.

I'll be giving away one ARC here on my blog in early September and another one in the Summer issue of my newsletter, which comes out next week.

And now, you might be wondering a few things about the new book. Such as...

Q. Is that Rhia on the cover?

A. In my mind, no. It looks exactly like I imagined our younger heroine Sura (whose story starts in the excerpt). If you read Voice of Crow, you might remember her as the little baby daughter of Lycas and Mali. Now she's all grown up, brave and angry and ready to do anything to throw the Descendants off her people's homeland.

Also, she's a Snake and can manipulate fire. Fire is cool.

Q. Wait, wait, rewind. Did you say the Descendants are occupying Asermos?


A. Sadly, yes. The Reawakened begins eighteen years after the end of Voice of Crow. The Descendants (or Ilions, as they call themselves) invaded, took over, and now occupy the villages of Asermos and Velekos. It all happened between books, so you haven't missed anything.

Q. So is Rhia still the main character?

A. Yep! She's still the one, as the song goes. The book begins and ends with her point-of-view. But just as Voice of Crow widened the scope beyond Rhia, The Reawakened goes even further, and we get (*counts on fingers*) six points-of-view in this book: Rhia, Sura, Lycas, Rhia's son Nilik, and two other new characters.

Q. Why isn't it titled [insert body part here] of Crow?

A. Because The Reawakened is better. See this blog post for why.

Q. So who's the Raven?

*zips lips*

Q. Does this book have vampires in it?

No. It's completely unconnected to my series that began with Wicked Game. However, that book's sequel, Bad to the Bone (releasing May 12, 2009) is already available for pre-order at Mysterious Galaxy and Amazon.

Q. Will there be further books in the Aspect of Crow universe?

A. This book ends this trilogy. Currently I have no plans to write more, but the idea of animal magic is pretty darn cool, so you never know--I might revisit this universe someday. There are lots of nooks and crannies in these lands that would make perfect material for short stories and novellas.

Q. Is it true that the word 'Reawakened' is really hard to type?

A. Yes. All the letters but one are crowded over on the left-hand side with the two littlest fingers.


So tell me what you think of the cover and/or the excerpt, or ask me another question about TR (see, I said it was hard to type, so I avoid it whenever possible) down there in the comments before 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday, September 3. I'll draw three names at random among my three blogs (jerismithready.com, LJ, and MySpace) to win an autographed TR cover flat. Good luck!

Labels: Contests, The Reawakened, website

• posted by Jeri @ 12:34 AM
• 27 comments