Dream Of The Jet-black City

By (author) Castro, Pablo Valcárcel
Short description/annotation:
With fellow rebel sisters, her search into the root cause will lead her away from the light into the dark heart of the city where danger lurks.

Geil is a creature born of Dream and bound to the Drake form she conjured to survive her Academy training.
Description:

Strange the Dreamer meets The Shadow of the Wind in this exciting and innovative fantasy with intricate worldbuilding, political twists and turns, a magic system based on dreams and nightmares being twisted into reality, a mythic storm overshadowing a dark and shaded city - and secrets from the past that threaten an entire nation. Perfect for fans of Brandon Sanderson, Mark Lawrence and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

All such Nightmares were born out of Dreamers'' minds - angry, cruel, terrible Dreamers, yes, but still men and women. Here, in the Library, the Nightmares have sparked from dying stories, from the anguished echoes of poets and scribes carved into the crevasses of codexes.

Ash and his crew race across rooftops in pursuit of living lightning from the perpetually raging Motherstorm. This energy the jet-black city of Onyxia depends upon is all that stands between them and starvation. When a monstrous nightmare attacks, death is all but certain - until Ash dreams a shadow panther into existence to protect himself. But this new power comes with a price: either conscription to the harrowing Academy or indebtment to a wealthy patron.

Daerna belongs to a devout sisterhood who sing canticles to pacify the eternal storm. When she learns of a mysterious sickness spreading through the city''s populace, she feels it is her duty to help, even though her order has abandoned the afflicted to their fate. With fellow rebel sisters, her search into the root cause will lead her away from the light into the dark heart of the city where danger lurks.

Geil is a creature born of Dream and bound to the Drake form she conjured to survive her Academy training. While nightmare-hunting she encounters a young girl with the dreamer gift and feels compelled to save her from enduring the same cruel fate she faced. But this means returning to the jet-black city, home to the past she has tried to outrun and navigating the political turbulence in the wake of an election.

As each pursues their own ends, they soon discover that they share common goals. But can they find a way to learn from the secrets the city has buried within its past before their whole world turns into a living nightmare?

Biographical note:
Pablo Valcárcel Castro grew up in a bilingual household in the Canary Islands, where he hid from sunny skies in musty libraries and fantasy books. After working as a lawyer and running a small video games studio, he turned his yearning for beautiful and impossible worlds into writing them as well as teaching entrepreneurship to make them happen.
Promotional headline:
Strange the Dreamer meets The Shadow of the Wind in this exciting and innovative fantasy with intricate worldbuilding, political twists and turns, a magic system based on dreams and nightmares being twisted into reality, a mythic storm overshadowing a dark and shaded city - and secrets from the past that threaten an entire nation.
Feature:
ON-TREND BLEND: The magic system of The Sandman meets the lyrical prose of Carlos Ruiz Zafon with the political intrigue of House of the Dragon
Feature:
INCREDIBLE WORLDBUILDING: The magical, political and theological systems seamlessly unite to create an intricately detailed, layered world for the narrative
Feature:
DEBUT AUTHOR: This is Pablo''s first novel and will form the start of a trilogy set in the same beautifully realised world