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Chaos Woods
Chaos Woods
“The Ever-Guise series is fun, vivid and engaging…We are off on a grand adventure and I am hooked and enjoying it.” —Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Dune: House Atreides
When the auction for a magical artifact goes awry, killing the thief who tried to steal it, young barmaid Telyn Brower winds up with a fragment of a forbidden mask. Highly illegal. Highly dangerous. And highly addictive. As Telyn and her friends begin to use its power to reshape their town of Harlech, they unleash unforeseen consequences.
But Harlech is no ordinary town. Isolated on the high plateau of the Chaos Woods—an enchanted forest where magic proves unpredictable—it survives in precarious balance between the magic-wielding armies of the coast and the wild denizens of the deep woods.
Soon, that balance shatters, and everything begins to change. A daemon smashes the prefecture. Slavery returns. Secrets surface and puzzles multiply. As winter storms gather and evil forces close in, Telyn and her friends must embark on a high-stakes adventure to break free from the mask's grip, survive ferocious beasts, and confront the dreaded mind wizard...or lose everything they hold dear.
A sweeping coming-of-age story about the allure of magic and the cost of wielding it, Chaos Woods begins one of the most original fantasy series since Roger Zelaznie’s Chronicles of Amber and Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer.
Chaos Woods
Chaos Woods
Dear loyal readers,
Those of you who’ve known me a long time know that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. And, although it took me a long time to get around to publishing my first novel, I wasn’t idly dreaming all those years. In fact, I completed my first fantasy novel in college. It was a romping adventure in a small, mountain town in the middle of a magical forest. It featured a tavern, trappers, magical creatures, monsters, mayhem, a spring fair and a young Melanie Brower as protagonist. Two agents asked to read the whole manuscript, but I didn’t land a contract.
A year ago, I picked it up again, determined to either “polish and publish” or leave it in the closet forever. Well, it didn’t work out that way. The writing was very uneven, some parts brilliant in their naivete, other parts just plain naive. I set to work…
I aged up the protagonist—and changed her name in the process. The magical artifact at the center of things morphed from a gem to a mask. The town developed a personality of its own, and the woodland adventures became way more exciting, and dangerous, and fun.
I’m excited to say that Chaos Woods is out now and better than I had ever imagined it. I’ve already written 50% of the sequel, and the author of Dune: House Atreides read it and announced:
“We’re off on a grand adventure, and I am hooked and enjoying it.”
I welcome you to the first adventure in the Chronicles of the Ever-Guise.
Scott T. Barnes
Author of the young adult novel Memories of Lucinda Eco, Scott T. Barnes won the L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future Award for his short story “Insect Sculptor.”
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