Synopsis

The Messenger’s Kin

An Epic Series

The Messengers’ Kin is a fantasy epic set in, what I call, a post-Renaissance apocalyptic world.  That is, this world had evolved to cultural heights similar to those of the European Renaissance, only to fall back into a Dark Age after a sorcerer had usurped first one great kingdom and then, through trickery, conquered another.

In conquering that kingdom, he took the Tablets of the Destinies from the dead and defeated king.  These had been a gift to that sovereign’s distant ancestor, the sorcerer’s second son.  And they gave him the power to enhance—and project—his own sorcery.  With them, he gained dominion over the better part of the world.

That sorcerer became a Dark Lord, terrible and powerful.

As the epic begins, he rules with an iron hand—and has for four hundred-and-thirty-two years.  Though appearing invulnerable, he has three great fears: Potinija, his most resourceful daughter, known to most as the sorceress Neti; the heirs of his elder son Troiden, founder of the Southern Kingdom; and the descendants of his twin brother Valamena, a great wizard in his own right.

This dark lord has cursed and exiled his daughter, and has come to regret that he didn’t kill her when he had the chance.  He believes the last descendant of Troiden died at Clúann rushing into a burning barn to save his pregnant wife.  A spy on the free island of Akora keeps watch on Veljes, his only known nephew still in human form—save for the one he holds captive in his dungeons.

Only one of his brother’s line, only a wizard, can enter into his Citadel and recover the Tablets of the Destinies.  And until such a man does—and leaves with those Tablets, the Dark Lord will sit secure on his throne.

It is a story I had never intended to tell.  But, it came to me unsummoned and grew as if of its own accord.  I have completed the first draft, having revised the whole thing once, and am at work on further revisions.

As my website goes live today, October 30, 2018, I choose to post the Prologue and first two chapters.  I waver on including the Prologue in the epic, having originally intended that the sorceress (the subject of said prologue) remain in the background until she enters the story herself.

Neti, however, did not want to stay silent.  At least the Neti who emerged in my own unconscious.

Coming Soon!

The Author

B. Daniel Blatt

B. Daniel Blatt, a writer based in Los Angeles, California, has recently completed a presentable draft of the novel The Masks of the Heroes, the first volume of a fantasy trilogy, The Messengers’ Kin. This is his second work of fiction. In the 1990s, he wrote Calypso’s Cave, a book about a married man who falls in love with a gay man.

He has also penned five screenplays, including an adaptation, based on his own original translation of Beowulf, in which he discovers the Beowulf-poet, more than 1,100 years after that accomplished storyteller’s death.

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