In Stephen Aryan’s The Coward, Kell Kressia is a legend, a celebrity, a hero. Aged just seventeen, he saved the world. Ten years later, a new terror has arisen in the north and Kell is called upon to take up his famous sword, Slayer. But Kell was never a hero - he was just lucky. And now he's just a coward who has no intention of risking his life for anyone...
Intrigue and rebellion is rife in the wake of the Emperor’s death in G.R. Matthew’s novel Seven Deaths of an Empire. The Empire’s fate lies in the hands of seasoned General Bordan and Apprentice Magician Kyron - for whoever controls the heir and the Emperor’s body, controls the Empire’s future.
Religion and power are at the heart of Quillem McBreen’s The Tenets of Truth, the first book in The Alytheian Cycle. The Church of the Righteous Truth sees all, controls all. Now, as the Church’s Premiero Irmao prepares to seize yet more power, four forgotten outcasts unknowingly hold the fate of Alytheia in their hands. As each stumbles deeper into a web of conspiracy and betrayal, their destinies will entwine, leading them inexorably toward revolution, sacrifice, and—perhaps—redemption.
About the event
Running time: 60 minues
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Price: £10/£8 concession - In Person - or £6/£4 concession - Live Stream - (plus 50p booking fee)
This event takes place in person and is broadcast via live stream.
About the authors:
Stephen Aryan was born in 1977 and raised in Whitley Bay, England. He has been reading fantasy since a very young age. After graduating university in 1999 he started working in marketing. Around this time he also started submitting his first fantasy novel to agents. His first book, Battlemage, was published by Orbit in 2014, followed by his trilogy "Age of Dread" in 2017. In 2020 Stephen was picked up for a new duology by Angry Robot Books. The first novel, The Coward, was published in June 2021 and it received a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly. Stephen lives in the West Midlands with his partner and two cats. When he’s not writing novels or podcasting, he can be found drinking real ale, reading books or watching TV.
Follow Stephen Aryan on Twitter @SteveAryan or visit his website.
Geoff Matthews began reading in the cot. His mother, at her wits end with the constant noise and unceasing activity, would plop him down on the soft mattress with an encyclopaedia full of pictures then quietly slip from the room. His father, ever the pragmatist, declared, that they should, “throw the noisy bugger out of the window.” Happily this event never came to pass (or if it did Geoff bounced well). Growing up, he spent Sunday afternoons on the sofa watching westerns and Bond movies with the self-same parent who had once wished to defenestrate him. When not watching the six-gun heroes or spies being out-acted by their own eyebrows he devoured books like a hungry wolf in the dead of winter. Many years later, Geoff finally realised a dream and published his own fantasy novel, The Stone Road, in the hopes that other hungry wolves out there would find a hearty meal.
Follow Geoff Matthews on Twitter @G_R_Matthews or visit his website.
Quillem McBreen, who is from Liverpool, is a writer of adult fantasy, and The Tenets of Truth is his debut novel and the first in his Alytheian Cycle series. Inspired to write through his discovery of audiobooks and his fascination with the way words are transformed off the page, he cites Brandon Sanderson, Bernard Cornwell and John le Carré as influences on his own work. Away from his writing career, he works in local government and holds a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Liverpool.
Follow Quillem McBreen on Twitter @QuillemM or visit his website.