In the city of Amoria, where magic rules all, Naila is the ultimate conundrum. A student under the watchful eye of Amoria’s sprawling Academy, Naila is undeniably gifted, yet she has never been able to harness her abilities. And time is running out. If she fails, she’ll be forced into exile, or worse – consumed by her own magic.
For decades mages and the magicless Hollows have lived side-by-side peacefully. But now that peace is threatened as old resentments bubble over. A powerful anti-Hollow faction led by Amoria’s most influential mages is determined to cast the Hollows out. With her Hollow background, Nalia is in danger of being exiled from everything she knows and everyone she loves if she cannot unlock her power.
When a tragic incident threatens her place at the Academy, Naila is saved by Haelius Akana, the most powerful living mage. A scholar and fellow outcast, Haelius is fascinated by Naila’s inability to use magic. Eager to help someone in whom he sees so much of himself, he stakes his position at the Academy on teaching her. Trapped in the deadly schemes of Amoria’s elite, Naila must dig deep to discover the truth of her powers – or watch the city she loves descend into civil war.
Annabel writes fantasy with fierce female characters and disaster wizards, and believes everything is improved by dragons.
She lives in a tiny village in Scotland, where most of her neighbours are sheep. She has a PhD in cardiovascular science, and when not making things up for a living, she works as a Medical Writer.
Her other joys are red wine, playing games, or showing you too many pictures of her dog.
I know this post is a few weeks late, but I’ve been ill, and in pain. I’ve decided to make this one publicly available rather than behind a pay wall. The story is over 19000 words long now, and there’s some difference between the story I’ve written in my notebook and the one you’ll read here.
Chapter 12 – Lah-Shah – In the asteroid belt
Lah-Shah looked over the scan data. The asteroid was quite large, dense and peanut shaped. There was plenty of metal in it, and the shape suggested that two asteroids had got a bit too close to each other and collided at some point. It surprised Lah-Shah that the humans on Aurox hadn’t sent auto-miners out here; despite the distance from the planet, it would be worth the effort.
A large object showed up on the scans; it lay buried beneath the surface, in the waist of the asteroid, hidden by scattered debris and surface shadows. It had a familiar outline on the scans. Lah-Shah ran the images through the control system and found a match: an IGASS science division mission ship.
For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain.
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.
Except one: Ganymedes Piscero – class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.
When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.
But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?
By: Professor David Nutt Narrated by: Professor David Nutt Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins Unabridged Audiobook Release date: 29-06-23 Language: English Publisher: Yellow Kite
Summary
The definitive guide to psychedelics, science and our health by a world-renowned, leading authority, Professor David Nutt.
We are on the cusp of a major revolution in psychiatric medicine and neuroscience. After fifty years of prohibition, criminalisation and fear, science is finally showing us that psychedelics are not dangerous or harmful. Instead, when used according to tested, safe and ethical guidelines, they are our most powerful newest treatment of mental health conditions, from depression, PTSD, and OCD to disordered eating and even addiction and chronic pain.
Professor David Nutt, one of the world’s leading Neuropsychopharmacologists, has spent 15 years researching this field and it is his most significant body of work to date. In 2018, he co-founded the first academic psychedelic research centre – underpinned by his mission to provide evidence-based information for people everywhere. It revived interest in the understanding and use of this drug in its many forms, including MDMA, ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, LSD and ketamine. The results of this have been nothing short of ground-breaking for the future categorisation of drugs, but also for what we now know about brain mechanisms and our consciousness.
At a time where there is an enormous amount of noise around the benefits of psychedelics, this book contains the knowledge you need to know about a drug that is about to go mainstream, free from the hot air, direct from the expert.
Are you ready to change your mind?
My Review
I started listening to this audiobook yesterday when I went for my walk, and finished it today while I was out on my walk. Honestly, I was looking for a short book that I would be able to get through fairly quickly. I’m putting off diving into a whole library of fantasy books that I really want to listen to, but I need a good run up to because I know they’ll hurt. Also, I’m trying to get my total up for the GoodReads Challenge. Yes, yes, I know, gamification of reading, bad, etc. I can’t help it! I read a lot, but none of it seems to count. I don’t think they have New Scientist or New Humanist magazines on GoodReads. They do have the BFS Journal and BFS Horizons, as well as Interzone, so some of my magazine reading does count.
Back to the book.
I thought this was an interesting, comprehensive look at the research around psychedelics and their potential uses in medicine. The author is obviously passionate about his work and helping people with mental illnesses using psychedelics, but I think he might have some blind spots when it comes to criticism. He’s clearly still upset about being sacked in the 1990s. I get it, it’s frustrating when you’re trying to share information and people refuse to listen because it doesn’t fit their narrative, but he’s had a massively important career in academia since then.
I’ve never taken drugs, it’s not my thing; in fact, I’ve said I would only try these drugs under clinical, research conditions, and since I respond well to my medication, I’d never qualify for the research trials. I found Nutt’s descriptions and his quotes from others, including research participants, fascinating. It’s one of the reasons I got this audiobook, I want to know what people experience without actually trying psychedelics. People I know have told me about their experiences but I’m interested in it from a scientist’s position.
I’m interested in the science of how they work. The explanations of the way the chemicals work on the brain are really easy to understand. Er, for me at least, but I have some background in biochemistry. I think a general reader without a science background should be able to make sense of it. Nutt’s frustration at the waste of research time and opportunity caused by unsupported bans and high costs seems well-founded.
Nutt narrated his book and he has a reasonable narration voice. His accent sounds comforting, he has clear diction and a warm tone.
Nutt has a shallow understanding of neurodiversity. I appreciate him mentioning that he doesn’t want to get rid of neurodivergent people, but he needs to actually understand what he’s saying. Neurodiversity covers everyone, neurodivergent refers to those who’s brains don’t fit the social norm. Neurodiversity is a social and political movement for disability rights; saying you don’t ‘want to get rid of their neurodiversity’ about treating anxiety in Autistic people, doesn’t really mean anything. Why didn’t an editor check that? Why hasn’t Nutt looked into it more deeply if he’s concerned about helping us? Also, ADHD isn’t a mental illness. It’s a form of neurodivergence, like autism, like OCD, like schizophrenia, etc. There are things we need help with and I’m sure psychedelics could be useful in some cases.
Ludluda, the sequel to Gogmagog, takes us on a haunting and delightfully witty adventure in a fantasy world which defies genre.
Luluda tells the story of a journey through a strange modern city whose power is sourced from the ghost of a dragon. Ludwich may no longer be at war with its great political rival overseas, but veteran sailor Cady Meade, survivor of many battles, suspects that the hard-won peace is about to break. She promises to deliver a preternatural ten-year old girl to a coming-of-age festival in the heart of Ludwich. But she has been warned by the prophets that dangers lie ahead.
Cady suspects that the young girl’s fate is entwined with that of the city. When the girl disappears, the old sailor must hunt her down, accompanied by a know-it-all mechanical man whose circuits are slowly grinding to dust. But Cady’s mission has always been to guard Ludwich from enemies both known and occult, and she will never give up.
Following the course of the River Nysis through the city, and beyond, Cady must uncover the final mysteries of the great dragon Haakenur’s life and death and afterlife. Her greatest battle is about to begin.
City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. As their legions scour the world of superstition with the bright flame of reason, so they deliver a mountain of ragged, holed and scorched flesh to the field hospital tents just behind the frontline.
Which is where Yasnic, one-time priest, healer and rebel, finds himself. Reprieved from the gallows and sent to war clutching a box of orphan Gods, he has been sequestered to a particularity unorthodox medical unit.
Led by ‘the Butcher’, an ogre of a man who’s a dab hand with a bone-saw and an alchemical tincture, the unit’s motley crew of conscripts, healers and orderlies are no strangers to the horrors of war. Their’s is an unspeakable trade: elbow-deep in gore they have a first-hand view of the suffering caused by flesh-rending monsters, arcane magical weaponry and embittered enemy soldiers.
Entrusted – for now – with saving lives deemed otherwise un-saveable, the field hospital’s crew face a precarious existence. Their work with unapproved magic, necromancy, demonology and Yansic’s thoroughly illicit Gods could lead to the unit being disbanded, arrested or worse.
Beset by enemies within and without, the last thing anyone needs is a miracle.
My Review
I immediately started listening to House of Open Wounds after finishing City of Last Chances, and am now impatiently awaiting the release of Days of Shattered Faith. Where book one does and industrial fantasy take on the revolts and rebellions of the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, book two takes us to the battlefield hospital, a la M.A.S.H., with outlaw priests and tortured souls performing miracles to save the lives of their conquerors.
We follow Yasnic who has become a smuggler of gods and his punishment for rebellion against perfection is to work in a field hospital, patching up Pall soldiers along with a crew of outcasts, led by a poisoner and a necromancer. It’s a bit bewildering for the priest, who is and isn’t a priest. He’s in an on and off relationship with his god. He falls in love with a daemon and discovers one of his colleagues is a king. It’s quite harrowing, especially when his god starts healing soldiers.
Who can no longer fight. This sedition spreads through the army as people discover that actually they quite like not dying horribly in battle. It causes a bit of a stir.
Other stuff happens, but you’ll have to read the book for yourself.
I enjoyed the development of Yasnic’s character and his relationship with his god. It’s complicated and he goes through a lot of emotions as he trues to break away. Like anyone, or any society, moving away from religious belief, he realises he depended on his god for companionship and that the relationship is abusive and co-dependant, and finally breaks free, although longing for the simplicity of his previous life. It’s subtly done and though provoking.
The language is evocative and highly descriptive. I love the change of perspective between characters, seeing events from different sides, although we mainly follow Yasnic. We get a glimpse of the complex histories and societies of the world, and the inherent hypocrisy of ‘perfection’ and imperialism is cleverly explored. The lies of imperialism are skewered nicely.
The magico-scientific basis of religion and technology is consistent, although different cultures and traditions manipulate the same forces in their own ways, and have their own explanations. I quite enjoyed the way Tchaikovsky uses the use and abuse of Divinati magic to point out the complications of trying to force one system into working within another, and the loss of context and safe guards that go with it. It is particularly resonant as I was also listening to a book about indigeneity in North America and the cultural of indigenous practices and their co-option by non-indigenous Americans. If you take the practices of of their context, then the power of the practice is removed or even corrupted (think wellness wankers using sweat lodges and killing people).
Tchaikovsky always has a point to his work, or at least I can always glean a theme and lessons in reading his books. That may just be a me thing, but even so, I end up thinking.
This book is the second in the series and I think it could happily stand alone, as you get enough background for the characters and the world in reading it, but reading in order helps to put some events in context and in the wider world.
Excellent narration. Love the accents.
Another fantastic book from Adrian, highly recommended.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 