She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Discord's Apple, and reported the following:Discord's Apple is the story of a young woman who returns home to be with her dying father, discovers that her father's basement is a storeroom for legendary treasures and mythological artifacts, and that her family has been caretakers of the storeroom for thousands of years. It's also the story of Sinon, a Greek soldier in the Trojan War, what happened to him after, and how he meets Evie.Read an excerpt from Discord's Apple, and learn more about the author and her work at Carrie Vaughn's website, blog, MySpace page, and Facebook page.
Also, Hera still wants that apple that Aphrodite cheated her out of.
It turns out that Page 69 of Discord's Apple is great microcosm of the conflict that follows through the book all the way to the climax. It's the first confrontation between Alex and Robin (i.e. Robin Goodfellow) and presages the fight to the death they have toward the end. It's also an additional clue that main character Evie gets that the world isn't what she thought it was. The fourth character on page 69 is the Queen -- Hera -- who is driving the events and inciting conflicts.
I don't have much more to say about page 69 than that. Here it is, in its entirety:He wasn't speaking to her mind; he was speaking to another place, deep in her gut, making her want to melt.
"That doesn't make sense," she said, trying to clear away the dizziness that seemed to overtake her.
"Evie! I've been looking everywhere for you!"
She looked, and there stood Alex. He took her elbow and pulled her arm out of the stranger's reach. In spite of herself, she leaned into his touch. He was solid, and didn't send shocks along her nerves.
"Hold this," Alex said, and tossed something at the stranger. It looked like a sprig of leaves, like part of a boutonnière.
Startled, the man caught it out of reflex. For a moment, he held it with both hands. Then he shouted, an indecipherable curse, and dropped it, scuttling away from it.
Alex shoved her to the car and climbed into the front seat, pulling her in with him.
"Hurry up and drive, please," he said.
Numb and bewildered, she did. The tires squealed as she jerked forward, circled around the parking lot, and lurched into the street.
The stranger glared after her, rubbing his hands together like he was brushing dirt off them.#
The Queen paced back and forth along the narrow aisle between the bed and dresser, arms crossed. Robin sat at the edge of the bed, melting an ice cube over each palm in turn.
He scowled, all his humor gone. "I thought it would be easy getting to the house through the girl. I usually do so well with them. But I didn't know about him. Who did you say he is?"
"He was a slave. A Greek, one of Apollo's. Detritus of history, lost in time somehow. He certainly doesn't have any power. He's nothing."
Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.
--Marshal Zeringue
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