- A fun, magical adventure with a strong moral undertone. Highly recommended. -The Wishing Shelf Awards
- An Imaginative New Take on Trolls – Steve Alcorn, author of How To Fix Your Novel
- Rushing streams, meadows, dark woods, crystal caves, and the earth’s lullaby – Linda Bricco Schalk, The Press Project
Banished for the crime of having blue eyes, Gaven chooses to apprentice under the treacherous Azool, the Blue Fairy of Torv. Magic comes easily to Gaven yet it’s never enough. In desperation, she offers up her firstborn trollkin to her fairy mistress in exchange for the final secret. Not that it matters. She’s hideous. No one is foolish enough to bind himself to a blue-eyed trolless.
This quirky and humorous coming of age adventure is book one in the award winning Legends of the Aurora epic trilogy. The Legends of the Aurora fuses natural phenomena to a veil of magic, and guides you on an action packed adventure dripping with humor into a Norse landscape populated by reinvigorated trolls, dragons, and fairies.
Interview with the Author
Why a female lead? I’m certainly not the first to chose a female protagonist for my fantasy novel,but trolls are most often portrayed as male. I decided to explore the softer side of trolldom. Gaven’s struggles will rip your heart out, but she finds her inner core of granite. I promise.
Many people think of fairies as sweet or at least benign, but you have taken an opposite approach. Why? I’m greatly influenced by the old stories. They’re more realistic. If you’ve read, the Brothers Grimm in the original form, you’ll know what I mean. Besides,somebody had to be the bad guy.
You add a lot of humor to the dangerous situations. Is that difficult? Not at all. I’m always thinking about my readers and when things get dark, I add a healthy dose of fun. Dragons, and more often trolls, are too frequently portrayed as angry creatures. I seek to redeem them.
Which character do you most identify with? Leaf. When I’m writing in her voice, I feel can the rough texture of the grass as she pulls her hands through the vegetation of the meadow, taste the sweetness of the plum as it flows over her tongue, and I chuckle at the bullfrogs croaking their love song from the river.
Why an Epic Fantasy Adventure? I’ve always been able to anthropomorphize things. Besides, I find that Fantasy allows my elastic imagination to go places its never been before. It’s so much fun.
What can you tell us about the other books in the Legends of the Aurora trilogy? Cairn: A Dragon Memoir finds Troika learning just how much he doesn’t know as he travels back to the lair for a real lesson in what it means to be dragon. Garden of Betrayal sees Leaf all grown up, but still longing to restore Slug. She faces her greatest fears and prejudices when she meets Terra, Aurora’s Elemental twin, but it’s the fairies who reveal the stunning truth behind the bloodstone in the book series.
