Description

The world of the Four Corners is not as it seems. The heavens creak and ancient, audient vegetation hems a burgeoning hamlet built atop the skeleton of an older, wiser people. Strange beasts prowl the undergrowth and unnerving intelligences watch from the skies. In the village of Harlow Valley, rules are what keep you alive. The citizens of the valley present a united front and they better, else the jungle, or worse, is sure to swallow them whole. Perhaps that is why, when teenager and troublemaker Greydal's adopted father is arrested for murdering a would-be thief, the members of the village close ranks and Greydal is ostracized and indicted for his father's crimes. Yet why do the hamlet's elders not seem to care about the murder? Why is their only concern certain artifacts allegedly kept and hidden by Greydal's father?

And so begins an unraveling, of both a dark mystery which stretches back to the founding of the world and also of Greydal himself. For there is more to this adopted boy than even he himself knows. He will be pressed. He will be hunted; a centuries-old witch hunt will grind back into action; a despot-turned-god will turn his diabolic sight east, towards Harlow Valley. Greydal must escape the vine-choked village of his boyhood to uncover the secrets that fester beyond the horizon. He will meet unlikely companions, such as the barefoot witch-girl, Roan, or the bizarre denizens of a city thrown out of time. He will combat threats both external and internal. For terrors real and imagined threaten reality itself, and despite his best wishes, only Greydal can stop them. But will anything be left of him by the end?

Hounding: A Tale of the Heaving Sky is a foray into the unknown. It explores the feeling that there is something off, something strange, just out of sight. A haunted epic fantasy, Hounding: A Tale of the Heaving Sky pits authentic, psychologically struggling characters like Greydal and his ad-hoc allies against both human and inhuman machinations, as well as against the shadows that peer at us from the oldest, deepest parts of ourselves. From sun-blasted peaks to icy, frothing rivers, Greydal will travel the world beyond his home. His journey will lead him into suffocating catacombs and to the very edge of creation itself, and beyond if he is not careful. Only one thing remains certain: he cannot run from himself.