Thursday, April 18, 2013

Ocean Views


The mermaids cleared away as fast as they appeared. Something from the bottom of the ocean simply called to them and they obeyed.

We shall never know what lured those sea creatures away. But thank goodness no one on board the Rusty Dagger fell for their seductive machinations.

Hmmmm, the vast ocean and its secrets.

Let's raise up our spyglass again and see what we can see.


The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

AFTER FOUR HARROWING YEARS ON THE WESTERN Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.



The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.

His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.



Railsea by China MiƩville

On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory.

Spectacular as it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than the endless rails of the railsea—even if his captain thinks only of hunting the ivory-colored mole that took her arm years ago. But when they come across a wrecked train, Sham finds something—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—that leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for.

Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.


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READ more about one of these worlds...

--~ Book Giveaway ~--

WIN one of the books above. -- winner's pick

Open to all.

Offer ends: April 30, 2013--> extended to May 6

TO DO: (3-parts)

1. READ at least one of the special author guest posts below:

Guest post #1: Wynn by Ciye Cho

Guest post #2: The Mermaids of the Darian Coast by David Wesley Hill

Guest post #3: Mermaid from The Shifu Cloth by Prue Batten


2. LEAVE a comment or question for the author at the individual post.
(if you already did this previously -- then you're all set)


3. RETURN to this post, let me know in comments that you did the deed along with your email.

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Contest has ended - winner is here

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image source: ocean

~~~ On A Sea Voyage schedule ~~~

 
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Images from: Lovelytocu