last reads

Cam Baity and Benny Zelkowicz are pleased to share an excerpt from  Blaze of Embers,  the conclusion to their Books Of Ore series. Micah realized that work in the camp had stopped. Feeling warm all of a sudden, he shed the thermal blanket and found that his skin tingled in the night air. The hair rose on his exposed arms. There was a strange scent too. Not harsh and metallic like most of Mehk, but sweet and rich, almost like roses. Watchmen stood alert. Workers clustered together, all of them staring off to the left at something on the horizon. The Shroud was churning. Clouds formed. Not the scrap-metal clouds of bullet rain, but soft white ones, like cumulus clouds back home. They bubbled out from the wall of fog, growing and rising. And . . . glowing? And coming at them. The air was hot now, and Micah felt sweat beading on his forehead. There was pressure in his ears, a squeezing sensation that swallowed up the sound around him.  “Get those jets up and running!” Goodwin...

Nora tagged along with the group, half-listening to the tour guide and craning her neck for anything that might remind her of Thomas or her dreams. They watched a short film about the history of the jail and some of its more prominent prisoners, but Thomas wasn’t among them. Then they toured the old section of the prison, three floors of claustrophobic corridors, cramped cells, and peeling paint. As they rounded a corner, Nora noticed something written in large block letters on the wall above a barred window: “Beware of the risen people that have harried and held, ye who have bullied and bribed.”  Nora shivered, frozen in place for a moment, then hurried to catch up with the group. She listened as Liz told them about the dark, desperate years of the Great Famine, when people would purposefully commit crimes in front of the authorities. They knew they were guaranteed at least one meal a day in prison, which was better than starving to death on the outside.  How bad must it have...