LAND OVER SEA
Land Over Sea is literary fiction in an epic fantasy setting on the scale of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, distinguished by its lyricism, unflinching interrogation of theme, and pledge of truth to its characters. Large plotlines and unusual linguistic approaches intertwine to produce a propulsive plot and themes of sexuality, mortality, love, conduct, and strife.
Five narratives intertwine:
Talmen and Elijah
are brothers, princes, who seek to live truthfully amid the crises of war.
"You are beside me on this wandering march, our standing upon peaks, their splendid passing and their unfulfillment. And you once told me there was some peace outside of the human. But we are very human. I do not think I would have it otherwise—better to know, and to dominate all our lives. If I am to live then I will live loud, adoring-hearted, for us—"
Talmen succeeds to a throne and must navigate questions of sacrifice and judgment.
"More—can you see it through? . . . Enemies are born this minute, next hour, yesterday and on all the tomorrows until black silence is brought down."
Elijah is taken deep into enemy country and placed within an ancient contest in which he becomes amid death and identity-shaping violence.
"Companions, this unbecoming, I say to you, resist. Death is unavoidable; no resistance will give you a thousand years. And yet, for the reason of life’s impossibility, resist; resist and you may place your mark. In a thousand years, it is the valor of your resistance that outlasts your bones."
Falyse
is met during the intensity of the brothers' education, and attempts to discover allies amid the dangerous politics of generational hatred.
"The agues, the encroachments, sadness and the fear, they assume their rightful places in the dark. Dying, we will know them fiercely only when their allotted hours come,
and if we are broken down we will know them more proud."
Akarsed
is an assassin searching for divinity.
"‘We cannot understand annihilation because we cannot understand our insignificance. I killed a man in the desert. When he was dead the world was utterly the same. Up in the vast black between the stars nothing spoke against his death. When you stand alone in static nature and listen you will understand. There is no destiny nor fate. We act beneath silence."
Ilya
lives in a settlement bordering a wilderness of beasts and must compose a voice amid the pressures of authoritarian language.
"Some stories resonate an hour, part of history without representing it. Other stories chart the patchwork of lives,
the future and the past, strands glowing in the otherwise unfathomable dark. We have laid them together.
By them we navigate the constellations of being.
Use—useful to what? Relevance is certain as long as the heart seeks—and it seeks in you."
