The Fall of the City of Bells is out now!
(Note, Island of Wak-Wak is also the publisher of my chapbook Ephemeral Village, which was nominated for the Elgin Award again this year, in its second and final year of eligibility. Voting has just ended less than two days ago, so we should learn the results to that soon.)
So, what in the world is this new book? Here's the back cover copy:
For every bell a person, for every bell a purpose, for every bell a power.
The city of Kloakweyst was never silent. Its magic was cast in bronze and iron: great bells tolling day and night, turning storms aside, holding back marauders, binding an empire together in one endless, protective peal. Then a stranger comes through the market gates wearing no bells at all, silence rippling in his wake, carrying a bell too perfect for this world, ushering the fall of Kloakweyst.
A novella told in verse, swinging like a clapper between the ringing splendor of before the fall and the haunted quiet after, The Fall of the City of Bells is a story of empire and exile, complicity and grief, and of learning what music is worth making after the power of the old song has failed.
We will make many mistakes in our wanderings,
but our carillon’s ringing, tolling, jingling journey
back and forth through a rebuilding wasteland
…
Bells to bells, tolling our wandering ways.
And what's it even mean that it's a novella in verse?
Well, I suspect that "novella in verse" might mean different things to different people. So...it's poetry, but I submitted it as a collection, not as a single long poem. It's 65 poems, in fact, from a page to a couple pages long each.
Primarily written in free verse. So, if you're unsure about poetry, don't know the forms or terms poets throw around, don't worry. No special knowledge required.
It's a secondary-world fantasy story at its heart, a story built through the kaleidoscopic prisms of these different individual poems. A story of magic that comes from bells.
It's the story of the fall of a once-powerful city (hardly a spoiler...). And it's primarily the story of one person we know only as the Charm Binder. Before the city fell, she was an apprentice, learning to create minor magic with small bells and chimes.
Into this world comes a silent stranger. And a threat to bell magic itself.
Decades after the city falls, the Charm Binder leads a band of wandering traders who fled the city, hiding their past and coping with their part in both the atrocities and the beauty of their fallen home.
These poems trace her life and theirs, guilt and survival, the magic and betrayals and what might persist.
The format is perfect for dipping in and out, reading a bit here and a bit there as the narrative takes shape.
Whether you love poetry (in all its liberated, alliterative, and elusive ways) or are leery of poems but enjoy the magic and beauty of a fantasy world, I hope you'll check it out!
There are links to Amazon and B&N at the link above. I've also seen listings on various sites I didn't know exist but look to be legit sites in other countries. And if you have a local, independent bookstore you like to support, consider buying it from Bookshop.org.
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