Good Morning!
As you know I love promoting authors and their books on Saturday Spotlight, but one of my greatest pleasures in doing this is hosting a local author with his/her debut novel. Today I get the privelege to introduce you to Kristopher Ackoury with Fear of the Sky, a dark, fantasy novel set in post-apocalyptic times.
Welcome, Kristopher! Please share your blurb & an excerpt from Fear of the Sky and tell us why you wrote it...
First and foremost, I’ve always wanted to tell an exciting adventure story full of monsters and meaning. Without that general drive, I never would have started writing.
To me, the most important idea in this book is our very human tendency to point the finger at others when a problem arises without considering how we might be contributing to it. I started writing it during the cultural, political, and pandemic warfare of 2020 and 2021, so maybe you can imagine how heavy humanity’s tribalistic tendencies felt to me at the time. The story is primarily an action-adventure story about dragons and rescue missions, but the protagonist’s journey is also my examination of the challenge of taking an honest look at yourself and admitting that you might be a bigger part of the problem than you think.
The second major idea behind this story is a little more abstract. There’s an ancient idea that attaining interior silence is necessary to hear God in the depths of one's heart. People have always struggled with various forms of worldly noise (think excessive devotion to entertainment, argument, comfort, consuming tragedy, activism, etc.) that threaten holy silence, but the modern technological age makes things particularly difficult. The noise is often addictive too. We often seek it as an escape from a world that sickens us, but it ends up making us sicker. I approached this concept metaphorically rather than directly, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Of course, there are many more whys I could describe, but these two are by far the biggest reasons I wrote this particular story.
Here's the Blurb: A father journeys into the post-apocalyptic unknown to rescue his six-year-old daughter before she is sacrificed to a dragon.
Dragons scour the ruins of a fallen civilization. A god known only as The One Who Speaks set its destruction in motion. Humanity's last refuge, Ivory City, clings to survival with a dwindling supply of dragon-killing poison. Iko Phainor lives a lonely life as the last surviving adherent of the ancient religion of Silence.
When Iko's young daughter, Cas, is kidnapped for sacrifice, his search for her leads him into a brewing war that threatens Ivory City’s existence. There, his fate intertwines with Zerah, a widow obsessed with revenge against the dragon that murdered her family, and Makus, a warrior manipulated by the whispered lies of The One Who Speaks. Together, they must face their deepest fears, mounting betrayals, and battle-hardened monsters to save Cas—and perhaps the world—from a horrific end.
And an Excerpt: Jynsomn had been the crowning achievement of the Kingdom of Ekara before the dragons came. Hewn from the granite and pristine marble of the nearby Sepentrio Mountains, indulgent palaces, proud archways, and impossible, towering monuments had sprawled for miles. Water still gurgled through a labyrinthine network of aqueducts to once-luxurious bathhouses and the derelict waterwheels of millhouses and forges. An ingenious sewer system still flushed away filth so people could pretend they weren’t people.
But despite Jynsomn’s architects’ beliefs and best efforts, the city had always been mortal. It had fared no better than anywhere else against the dragons. What little remained of its grandeur dissolved silently into the tangled wilderness.
Iko cut through the ruins with ease. He’d been taking the same path to Cas every Saturday evening for almost two years now. He knew the surest way to stay out of sight of the sky, depending on the season, and which structures were stable enough to travel through without risk of being buried alive. Most importantly, he knew the best ways to avoid any of the other survivors who lived there. Not counting Cas or Iko’s friend, Elex, there were only twenty-nine of them. But most of them were drunkards and heathens, and Iko usually avoided unnecessary dealings with them.
Wonderful, Kris! Give us the low down on you and where we can find Fear of the Sky and YOU...
Connect with Kris via his website. Fear of the Sky can be purchased at Amazon & Barnes and Noble. Also, check out my interview with Kris on his YouTube Channel!