Hey y’all! I’m really stoked to have Sherry Thomas here today
as a part of THE BURNING SKY Blog Tour! I LOVED this book! One of the things I
loved was its High Fantasy but, it has a foothold in the real world. Actually a
good portion of the book takes place in London and while I loved the Mage
Realms I thought I’d like to know why Sherry decided to write this book with
both a Fantasy World (Which is amazing and I want to live there!) and a real
world aspect.
What brought about this post was I wanted to know what part of
London was (my new book boyfriend sorry Iolanthe lol) Titus’s absolute favorite
place so we get a deleted scene! Haven’t heard of THE BURNING SKY? Check it out and then stick around for
the guest post and the awesome giveaway!
Title: THE BURNING SKY (The Elemental
Trilogy #1)
Author: Sherry Thomas
Pub. Date: September 17, 2013
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Pages: 480
It all began with a ruined elixir and an accidental
bolt of lightning…
Iolanthe Seabourne is the greatest elemental mage of her generation—or so she's
being told. The one prophesied for years to be the savior of The Realm. It is
her duty and destiny to face and defeat the Bane, the greatest mage tyrant the
world has ever known. A suicide task for anyone let alone a sixteen-year-old
girl with no training, facing a prophecy that foretells a fiery clash to the
death.
Prince Titus of Elberon has sworn to protect Iolanthe at all costs but he's
also a powerful mage committed to obliterating the Bane to avenge the death of
his family—even if he must sacrifice both Iolanthe and himself to achieve his
goal.
But Titus makes the terrifying mistake of falling in love with the girl who
should have been only a means to an end. Now, with the servants of the Bane
closing in, he must choose between his mission and her life.
Now on to the awesome guest post!
Jaime has asked
me to write a post about Titus’s favorite place at the nonmage boarding school
he attends. To do that, let me first
give you a little background on the school itself.
I always knew
that The Burning Sky was not going to be high fantasy in the manner of The Lord of the Rings. It was always going to have one foot firmly
in the real world and that real-world footing was going to be a boarding school
for boys.
At one point, a
friend asked why I didn’t make up a fictional boarding school. My answer? I wanted more authenticity. But also, I wanted a world I didn’t have to
construct from scratch. Not to mention,
while freedom to create is wonderful, I’ve always felt that limits and
restraints are what truly spur creativity to flourish.
So I put my mage
protagonists at Eton College, a real school for boys located some twenty-five
miles east of London, which still exists today—both Prince William and Prince
Harry are Old Etonians. And by doing
that, I am bound by the seasons and traditions of that school.
A huge part of
student life at Eton is sports. The
school has three academic terms a year, called Halves—a name obviously made up
by someone who couldn’t do fractions. J Each half is dominated by
a couple of signature sports. And the
signature sports of the Summer Half, which runs from April to July, are cricket
and rowing.
(The Burning Sky’s timeline runs the
length of Summer Half, 1883.)
Iolanthe/Fairfax
is a cricketer. Titus, on the other
hand, rows. And that venue for rowing,
the Thames River, is Titus’s favorite place at this school.
They stood some distance from the
house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the
river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean
exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.
It’s interesting to me, because rowing is the
ultimate team sport. Everyone’s motions
must be exactly synchronized, and the slightest slippage would cause a team to
lose the competitive edge. You would
think Titus would hate something like this.
And I posit that perhaps he had, in the beginning, since he is a lone
wolf accustomed to doing everything by himself.
But underneath that aloofness is a boy who wanted
to belong to a wider humanity. And he
grew to enjoy rowing precisely because of the teamwork—and because it is
teamwork that does not require him to speak or otherwise communicate.
Titus could totally get down with that.
I usually don’t do deleted scenes for my books, cuz
deleted scenes are deleted for a reason. But there are always exceptions. And I
think the passage below, which is not in the final text of the book, is such an
exception.
“Let’s
go see what the wet bobs are doing,” said Sutherland, at the end of the day’s
cricket practice.
Students
who played cricket in summer half were called dry bobs; rowers were wet
bobs. There was quite a hierarchy of
rowers. The school boats had ranks—the
nuances of which largely escaped Iolanthe.
And every rower aspired to be one of the eight who rowed for the school
in the Henley Regatta.
On
the Thames, three boats were headed upstream, two downstream.
“That’s
St. John,” said Sutherland, spotting a boy from Mrs. Dawlish’s house on a
four-man scull. “Put your back into it,
St. John!”
“You
row like Mrs. Dawlish!” shouted someone else.
The
boys laughed. St. John stuck his tongue
out but otherwise made no response.
Iolanthe
was curious to see the prince row. She found it difficult to imagine him, with
his restless, clever mind, doing something so repetitive.
Two
more boats passed them, carrying no one from Mrs. Dawlish’s house. A third boat appeared, headed upstream.
“Is
that Titus?” asked Rogers.
It
still jarred her to hear the prince called by his name. She almost turned to Rogers to admonish him
not to be so familiar. Instead she
squinted her eyes. “No, that’s not him.”
Another
four-man scull rounded the bend. The
rowers had their back to her, but she immediately recognized the prince, seated
second from the front.
“How
good is His Highness as a rower?” she asked.
“His
build is wrong for rowing—not brawny enough,” said Kashkari. “But he has extraordinary techniques—or so
the captain of the eight tells me.”
It
was odd to see the prince in a team endeavor, he who probably didn’t even want
to partner with her. Yet he was very
much one of the team. The crew rowed as
one, their pulls strong and smooth, the blades of their oars slicing into water
with perfect unison, in exact alignment.
Rowing
was honest and simple—precisely what his life was not.
And there you have it, the
Thames River, Titus’s favorite thing about Eton.
Eeeeeeppppp ok that was awesome thanks so much for
sharing Sherry! Also Prince Harry *Swoons*
About Sherry:
Sherry Thomas is one of the most acclaimed romance authors
working today. Her books regularly receive starred reviews from trade
publications and are frequently found on best-of-the-year lists. She is also a
two-time winner of Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA® Award.
English is Sherry's second language—she has come a long way
from the days when she made her laborious way through Rosemary Roger's Sweet
Savage Love with an English-Chinese dictionary. She enjoys digging
down to the emotional core of stories. And when she is not writing, she thinks
about the zen and zaniness of her profession, plays computer games with her
sons, and reads as many fabulous books as she can find.
Sherry’s next book, THE BURNING SKY,
volume one of her young adult fantasy trilogy, will be available fall 2013.
Author photo by the lovely and talented Jennifer Sparks
Harriman at Sparks
Studio.
Check out
the Book Trailer!
Giveaway
Details:
For First Place (US Only):
1 Hardcover of THE BURNING SKY a tote bag, and handmade balm,
scrub, and bath tea.
Runners Up (US Only)
3 Hardcovers of THE BURNING SKY and a tote bag.
3 runners up will get swag packs (stickers,
bookmarks, signed bookplates)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour
Schedule:
Week 1
Week 2
