This is the one moment in my blogging career where I wish I made YouTube videos so that you guys could actually see how much I'm jumping up and down right now. I cannot wait for you guys to see and read the epicness that is THE LAST NAMSARA.
Now if you've been on my blog, then you might already know how incredible the author of this story is. This past summer, Kristen Cicarelli did an interview on my blog where she talked about all the difficult obstacles she had to overcome for ten years before she finally got her book deal.
I, like many of you, was so touched and inspired and motivated by her story of perseverance (if you haven't had a chance to read it, here - read it and get motivated). I was already a big fan of Kristen as a human before I got to read this book.
And then I read this book.
GUYS.
This is one of my favorite stories of all time.
It has dragons. It has bad ass warriors. It has devastatingly beautiful legends and mythologies. And it has DRAGONS!!!
I have never read a book so fast and I have also never had to go in the shower and sob after reading a book because it was just that beautiful (if you think I'm exaggerating, I will give you the contact info for my boyfriend who watched me sob and cry because this book is that good).
So you have a wonderful author, a wonderful human, and a wonderful book. Now you're going to see a wonderful cover.
Behold!
In all its glory.
THE...
LAST...
NAMSARA!!!!
Are you in love? Do you want to kiss her and watch her wreak havoc with her blade? If you do it's okay, because I want to, too!
I'm not lying when I tell you this book cover is currently my desktop background and I stare at it as I revise my own novel because Kristen and her beautiful story motivate me that much.
And guess what?
You get to read a little sneak peak of this incredible story now:
ONE
Asha lured the dragon with a story.
It was an ancient story, older than the mountains at her back, and Asha had to dredge it up from where it lay deep and dormant inside her.
She hated to do it. Telling such stories was forbidden, dangerous, even deadly. But after stalking this dragon through the rocky lowlands for ten days now, her hunting slaves were out of food. She had a choice: return to the city dragonless or break her father’s ban on the ancient tales.
Asha never returned without a kill and she wasn’t about to now. She was the Iskari, after all, and there were quotas to fill.
So she told the story.
In secret.
While her hunters thought she was sharpening her axe.
The dragon came, slithering out of the red-gold silt like the treacherous thing it was. Sand cascaded down its body, shimmering like water and revealing dull gray scales the color of mountain rock.
Three times the size of a horse, it loomed over Asha, thrashing a forked tail while its slitted gaze fixed on the girl who’d summoned it. The girl who’d tricked it here with a story.
Asha whistled for her hunting slaves to get behind their shields, then waved off her archers. This dragon had spent the night burrowed beneath the cold desert sand. With the sun only just rising, its body temperature wasn’t warm enough for it to fly.
It was stranded. And a stranded dragon fought fierce.
Asha’s left hand tightened on an oblong shield while her right hand reached for the throwing axe at her hip. The rough esparto grass rattled around her knees as the dragon circled, waiting for her to let down her guard.
That was its first mistake. Asha never let down her guard.
Its second was to blast her with flame.
Asha hadn’t been afraid of fire since the First Dragon himself left her with a vicious scar running down the right side of her body. A sheath of fireproof armor covered her now from head to toe, made from the hides of all the dragons she’d killed. The tanned leather buckled tight against her skin and her favorite helmet—one with black horns mimicking a dragon’s head—protected her from dragonfire.
She kept her shield raised until the blaze ceased.
The dragon’s breath was now spent. Asha threw down her shield. She had a hundred heartbeats before the acid in its lungs replenished, allowing it to breathe fire again. She needed to kill it before that happened.
Asha drew her axe. Its curved iron edge caught the early morning sunlight. Beneath her scarred fingers, the wooden handle was worn smooth. A comfortable fit against her palm.
The dragon hissed.
Asha narrowed her eyes. Time to end you.
I did the math and that's exactly 0.5% of the story. So if anything in that excerpt excited you, just remember it's not even 1% of how amazing this story is.
If you need this in your life (believe me, you do), then you can order this beautiful cover and beautiful story right now!
CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE BOOK
Everyone who preorders the book is getting an illustration of Asha hunting down Kozu, the ancient and epic dragon she needs to kill in order to escape a lethal marriage. (Click here for more details!)
I've already read this book and I'm ordering another copy because I need this poster above my writing desk. So if you want to look at the same thing I'm going to look at and be inspired by when I write, I'd hop on this campaign!
ABOUT THE BOOK
Kristen Ciccarelli’s debut fantasy explores an intricately woven world of deception, inner darkness, and dragons that fantasy fans won’t be able to resist.
In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.
These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.
Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER THIS STORY NOW
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Learn more about Kristen here
Kristen Ciccarelli hails from Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula where she grew up on her grandfather’s grape farm. She spent her childhood running wild with her cousins, adventuring in the woods, building forts in the barn, and obsessing over books, dragons, and girls wielding really cool weapons. These days Kristen resides in Kitchener, Ontario with her blacksmith and her dog. She wrote The Last Namsara for the girl she used to be (and sometimes still is).