When only the wrong paths remain, do you walk or get left behind?
Welcome to the December 5th stop on the blog tour for Bridge to Magic by Alex Thornbury with Bewitching Book Tours (schedule linked.) Follow the rest of the tour for more spotlights, reviews, more exclusive content, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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About the Book
Bridge to Magic
The Sundered Web Book One
by Alex Thornbury
Published 24 February 2023
Shadow Lore Publishing
Cover Artist: Alejandro Colucci
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 392
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
An award-winning debut for lovers of traditional fantasy and the readers who crave the dark, disturbing and original.
Men thought they had won the war against magic, when a demi-god had sundered their realm and banished magic and its keepers to the deadlands. But then another terror was born. Nothing can survive the approaching Blight. Terren, the last refuge of mankind, now stands alone in its path. Only the bridge across the great chasm offers any hope of escape… for some.
Elika has long feared the bridge to the Deadlands. It had taken her parents, and the lives of more poor fools than she could count. What’s there for them anyway on the other side but more suffering and death? Though the gods had abandoned them, the king and his priests will stop the Blight. They just need to destroy every echo of magic, the source of the Blight. Then she discovers that the biggest echo of magic is hiding inside her, and through her it seeks to enact the will of its own.
Accused of being a mage, she is hunted and hated. Many doubt her loyalties. Her gang turns against her. The one man she thought she could trust and love, abandons her. Everything she knew about her past shatters, as long-buried secrets about her true birth emerge. Worse still, she may not even be human. She must race to find a way to purge herself from magic’s hold. But as time runs out for the city and her magic only grows in power, can she sacrifice herself to save the last of humanity and all that she loves?
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Excerpt
There was a time before the bridge was forged, but those stories had been mostly forgotten. The dark history of that bygone age was now buried in the archives of the priests. Only the echoes of it remained on the tongues of minstrels and drunks. Elika had heard them all and each tale seemed more terrible and unimaginable than the other.
Those were dismal times of endless wars—men against magic, magic against men. The time when even the storms and rains were at the mercy of magic and its fickle moods. It might snow in the summer, or the hot winds might carry sand upon them, burying entire cities. Honest travelers feared to ride through the forest, lest the trees attacked them. A farmer might wake up to find his river flowing the wrong way or dried up altogether. Those days were gone and might have been forgotten, but for this stark reminder before Elika’s eyes.
And who had not stood before the dark bridge in their last moments, facing that choice they all must one day make?
Like that hoary, old codger in the ale-stained uniform of the city’s Blue Guard who had stood before the bridge for nigh on an hour; unsteady on his legs, his sour breath steaming in the crisp, winter night, drinking deeply of the cheap gin, which was as likely to kill him by morning as what he now faced. He took a long swig out of his bottle as he braced himself for the unknown fate ahead.
Elika sat huddled in the doorway of an abandoned house, watching him, needing to know whether he would reach the other side or die crossing. Her ears filled with the howling winds rising from the great chasm, and she did not need to imagine what he was thinking, staring as he did at the monstrous bridge and the lifeless bank beyond, for she was thinking the same—surely it is better than what remains at our back. Better than what approaches.
She clutched the cloak tighter around herself against the biting gust of wind trying to rip it from her. She had scavenged the woolen cloak some days ago from a dead beggar, and it still smelled of his mustiness. She pulled up her knees to her chest and clamped her icy hands under her arms.
The stone wall was cold at her back. Her breath steamed. She waited and watched the old guard take another wobbly step toward the bridge, seeking courage in his gin-dulled mind. He took another gulp, stared at the empty bottle in surprise, then threw it aside with a foul curse. The bottle hit the frozen ground and rolled off the edge of their world into the chasm, to fall for eternity in that endless darkness.
About the Author
Alex Thornbury is an award-winning author. She grew up in Cheshire UK, and developed deep love of history and fantasy thanks to the many castles she visited as a child. Though she grew up to be an Alchemist by trade, she never stopped fantasising about other worlds, dragons and epic battles.
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Giveaway Alert!
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Thanks for sharing this excerpt, I thought it was good.
That’s a strong excerpt and has me curious about this book now.