The Witch and her Daughter

I've got a new paperback!

It's an omnibus edition of the fourth and fifth books in the Yurt series, The Witch and the Cathedral and Daughter of Magic.  It's for sale on Amazon (link here) and coming soon to other bookstores.  (It's also available as an ebook, offered through Amazon at a discount price compared to buying the two novels separately.)

It's a companion volume to My First Kingdom, which was an omnibus of the first three Yurt novels.  These five books were originally all published by Baen as mass-market (small size) paperbacks twenty-five years ago, and if you bought them then they're probably falling apart by now.  These are trade (large size) paperbacks on sturdier paper.

If of course you've never read any of the Yurt books, what are you waiting for?  A Bad Spell in Yurt (the first one) can also be bought as a free-standing trade paperback or as an ebook on Amazon and all other major ebook platforms.  All five of these books are available both as ebooks and audiobooks.

And then there's the series' boffo finale, Is This Apocalypse Necessary? available both as its own trade paperback or as an ebook, and Third Time's a Charm, a collection of three novellas (short novels) that take place in between the main books (available ditto).

So refresh your shelves with new editions, or get started on your holiday shopping!  (If a girl can't promote her own books, whose books can she promote?)

The two novels in The Witch and Her Daughter are all about female magic-workers, confounding (or confusing) the male wizards, especially the wizardly narrator.  The books are surprisingly intense.  When I was formatting the paperback, I had to keep stopping to take a breath.  On the other hand, there are also some very funny parts, like the comment, "I've noticed this before. The Earth never opens up and swallows you when you need it to."

Here's the opening to give you a taste:

PART ONE - THE CATHEDRAL

That morning I thought my main problem was the three drunk newts.  But that was before I got the telephone call from the chaplain.  He was not in fact the chaplain any more, but then a minute ago the newts had been three drunk students.

I had been sitting in on Zahlfast's class at the wizards' school.  He paused in his description of the basic transformation spell to explain the dangers inherent in its use.  Any magic spell, even illusions, can have repercussions far beyond the expected, and advanced spells if not done properly can lead to loss of identity or even life.

The three drunk wizardry students, sitting together and laughing quietly in the back, had apparently decided to test for themselves what these dangers might be.

We dived for the newts before they had a chance to disappear into cracks in the floor.  "Hold onto those two, Daimbert," said Zahlfast.  "I'll start on this one."

The newts wiggled in my hands as I tried to hold their smooth bodies gently.  The loss of a tail or a leg as a newt would mean permanent damage to the student as a human, and if they escaped as newts we might never be able to return them to themselves.  They were quite attractive, light green with bright red spots, but their tiny newt eyes looked up at me with human fear.

The rest of the class had retreated to the back of the room.  Zahlfast glared at them.  "What are you waiting for?  This is all the demonstration you'll get today."  The students left in some confusion, and he returned to his spell.

It is harder to undo someone else's spell than one of your own.  As I started on one of the newts I was holding, Zahlfast finished with his, and suddenly a student stood before him, or rather slumped.  He was slightly green, but I think that was from feeling ill rather than the after-effects of being a newt.
I finished with mine and handed the third to Zahlfast.  "How can they be drunk so early in the day?  I didn't think the taverns down in the City were even open yet."

Zahlfast spoke the final words in the Hidden Language to break the spell.  "Bottles in their rooms," he said as the last dazed and frightened newt became a dazed and frightened wizardry student.

"We never had bottles in our rooms when I was a student here," I said self-righteously.

Zahlfast looked at me sideways, a smile twitching the corner of his mouth.  "As I recall, you had plenty of trouble at the transformations practical exam, even perfectly sober."

I preferred not to recall all my embarrassment with those frogs, even twenty years afterwards, so I loftily ignored this comment.  I had, after all, become a perfectly competent wizard in the meantime—or at least had managed to persuade the wizards' school of my abilities enough that they had invited me back for a few months as an outside lecturer.

"Now," said Zahlfast to the students.  "Are you sober enough to listen to reason?"

"Spill a spell, spoil a spell," blurted one and collapsed on his face.  I was interested to see that they still excused themselves for magical mixups with the same catch-phrase we had used years ago.

© C. Dale Brittain 2018