Tuesday, October 7, 2014

"Silverblind"

Tina Connolly lives with her family in Portland, Oregon, in a house that came with a dragon in the basement and blackberry vines in the attic. Her stories have appeared all over, including in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Connolly applied the Page 69 Test to Silverblind, the latest book in the historical fantasy series that began with the Nebula finalist Ironskin, and reported the following:
From page 69:
At the sight of the two of them standing, the wyvern grew suspicious again. Although Tam started his whistle, the wyvern tilted its head upward, opened its throat to let out the strange ululating cry that would call back its mate.

"You'd better go," said Dorie. "One will nest and the other fight. You won't like that."

"You're right," Tam agreed ruefully. "Can we offer you a lift back to the city?"

"We?" said Dorie, dusting off and looking back at the nest. She watching the wyvern—graceful, proud, silver—and then the next moment she wasn't. It was falling to the ground, a dart protruding from its scaled chest.
Page 69 of Silverblind shows one of the key settings of the book. Ironskin was set in the country, Copperhead in the city, and now Silverblind is equally divided between urban and rural.

Dorie Rochart wants to do field work—tracking down wyverns and basilisks and any other strange creatures she can find. But when no one will hire a girl for such a dangerous job, she disguises herself as a boy and heads off to do it regardless.

So here she is, up in the mountains, in the forests, trying to gather wyvern eggs, and she runs into a familiar face from the past....

Silverblind is a standalone set 18 years after Ironskin and Copperhead, but if you’ve read the first two volumes, you’ll recognize Tam as the young boy from Copperhead. Dorie hasn’t seen him in a long time, not since they parted on unfriendly terms. Just her luck to run into him when she’s shapeshifted into the form of a boy.
Learn more about the book and author at Tina Connolly's website, blog, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: Copperhead.

The Page 69 Test: Copperhead.

Writers Read: Tina Connolly.

--Marshal Zeringue