I am
thrilled to be hosting a spot on the THIS ETERNITY OF MASKS AND SHADOWS by Karsten
Knight Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter
the giveaway!
About The Book:
Title: THIS ETERNITY OF MASKS AND SHADOWS
Author: Karsten
Knight
Pub. Date: June 2, 2020
Publisher: Karsten
Knight
Pages: 356
Formats: Paperback,
eBook
American Gods meets Watchmen in this
mythology-inspired mystery from Karsten Knight, author of the Wildefire
trilogy.
In a city of gods and mortals,
secrets never die.
The gods walk among us. Some lurk in
the shadows, masquerading as mortals; others embrace their celebrity status,
launching careers from Hollywood to Capitol Hill.
One of them just murdered Cairn
Delacroix's mother.
As Cairn sifts through the rubble,
she uncovers a conspiracy two decades in the making: a cursed island, the
fellowship of gods who journeyed there, and the unspeakable act that
intertwined their fates. One by one, the members of that voyage are dying, and
Cairn's investigations land her in the crosshairs of the rogue goddess
responsible.
With the help of Nanook, a polar bear
god turned detective, Cairn descends into Boston's underworld of supernatural
crime and political aspiration. To avenge her mother and unmask her assassin,
she’ll first have to reckon with a gut-wrenching secret that will rewrite the
life she thought she knew.
Excerpt:
The Anchor
Cairn could hear
it over the flames crackling in the library fireplace and the thunderstorm
battering the windows outside. Her mother, Ahna, smiled at her expectantly as
Cairn cradled the gift in her lap.
To my fearless
daughter on her 18th birthday, the tag read. Cairn traced her fingers over the pattern of air holes
punctured through the foil wrapping paper.
“I’m going to
guess this isn’t the Jeep I asked for,” Cairn said at last. The box quivered in
response as if to say, “No, I am not.”
“Go on,” Ahna
urged her. The firelight danced across her face.
As Cairn tugged
the silver ribbon to undo the bow, the box abruptly went still. Cautiously, she
lifted the lid an inch.
A pair of
vibrantly ice blue eyes peered out, regarding her curiously. Cairn’s breath
caught.
Nestled in a
blanket inside was a kitten unlike any she’d ever seen. He had a spotted gray
coat thick enough to withstand the fiercest Arctic chill and disproportionately
broad paws built like fur-covered snowshoes. His tufted ears bristled as he
backed his stubby tail into the corner of the box.
“Lower your hand
in,” her mother instructed. “Let him meet you halfway when he’s ready.”
Cairn left her
trembling fingers outstretched six inches from the creature’s muzzle. He cocked
his head to the side, and after a moment’s hesitation, he extended one of his
comically enormous paws and batted at Cairn’s fingertips. Apparently, she
passed his test, because all at once he rushed forward, nuzzling the glands beneath
his foxlike ears against the bony ridges of her knuckles.
When Cairn could
finally form words again, she repeated, “This is not a Jeep.”
“No, but he’s
great at off-roading.” Ahna was smirking now, her maternal X-ray vision
penetrating Cairn’s nonchalance into the melting heart beneath. “He’s a
Canadian lynx. When I visited your grandparents up in Labrador, I found him in
their garden one morning, nibbling away at a crowberry bush. A predator had
mauled the mother just beyond the fence. I couldn’t bear to leave him to fend
for himself.”
The kitten
awkwardly clambered out of the box, his plump white belly momentarily getting
caught before he flopped out onto the shag carpet. Cairn watched him stagger
across the room toward the bookcases that housed her father’s collection of
rock and mineral specimens. His tail wiggled in anticipation right before he
made a dramatic leap for one of the shelves—
—and failed
spectacularly. He dropped back to the floor, rattled. A second attempt yielded
the same result. On the third try, however, the lynx clung defiantly to the
edge by two paws, and after some frantic scrabbling, he pulled himself up to
the ledge. Cairn and Ahna applauded.
“Ahna …” Cairn’s
father, Emile, appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, a pair of jeweler’s
magnifying glasses perched atop his disheveled hair. He pointed at the tiny
creature, which was using the craggy surface of an amethyst as a
chin-scratching post. “How many times have we talked about smuggling exotic
pets into the country?”
Cairn scooped the
kitten off the shelf and held him inches from her father’s nose. “Come on, how
could a face this cute possibly be illegal?” The fluff ball hung limply in her
hand and blinked.
Emile’s wistful
eyes landed on his wife. “In my experience, it’s always the cute ones that get
you in the most trouble.”
Ahna blew him a
kiss. “He’ll need a name,” she said.
The lynx crawled
down into Cairn’s lap and curled into a ball. Within seconds, he was snoring
softly, unfazed by the fierce winds raging outside the Delacroix’s seaside
home.
Cairn gingerly
ruffled the hair on his neck. “We’ll name him Squall.”
“Tonight, I’ll
tell you the myth of Sedna.”
Ahna sat at the
foot of her daughter’s bed, as she had so many nights since Cairn was old
enough to remember. Squall claimed the space behind his owner’s knees and
nestled in for warmth. While still technically a kitten, he grew bigger by the
day.
Ahna gathered her
stories from every mythology, every region of the world, and every century, but
she always came back to the myths of the Inuit people—their people.
Sedna was the
goddess of sea life, and while the details changed with every iteration Ahna
told, the myth always remained as unforgiving as the tundra from which it had
originated.
“And so,” her
mother continued, “Sedna angered her father by turning away all of her male
suitors, claiming she’d just as soon marry her dog. To punish Sedna, her father
lured her into his kayak, rowed out to the middle of the icy bay, and before
she could fight back, he cast her into the frigid waters. Sedna pleaded with
him and attempted to climb back into the boat, but with a mighty slash of his
knife, he severed all ten of her fingers. The spurned young woman sank to the
bottom of the ocean. But from violence and death springs life anew. As her
severed fingers slipped into the dark depths, they transformed into the sea’s
most remarkable creatures—the salmon, the walrus, the seal, the whale, the
narwhal. Sedna herself was reborn as their master and presided over Adlivun,
the underworld where we will all one day eternally rest.”
The myth of Sedna
had always been Cairn’s favorite, and for good reason:
The story was
about her mother.
The gods and
goddesses of every pantheon were real. Reincarnated every century, these
powerful beings returned to earth with no memories of their previous lives.
Some lurked in the shadows, masquerading as mortals, while others embraced the
celebrity status of their godhood, publicly “coming out” as they launched
careers in Hollywood or Washington. For better or worse, the gods were destined
to love each other, clash with each other, and more often than not, kill one
another.
Ahna
Delacroix—the latest reincarnation of Sedna—had chosen the quieter path,
marrying a mortal, bearing his child, and establishing herself as a respected
marine biologist, a role that provided a convenient outlet for surreptitiously
using her abilities.
From the moment
she became a mother eighteen years ago, Ahna had vowed to do whatever it took
to keep her family safe from those who feared or reviled the gods walking among
them. For every mortal who had accepted the “mythological born” as just another
subset of the population, several more had deemed their very existence an
abomination.
And then there
were the gods with a vendetta to settle …
Cairn, who had
learned of her mother’s divine identity several years earlier, still found the
macabre nature of Sedna’s myths amusing. “I can’t believe you’ve been reciting
this story to me since preschool,” she said when Ahna finished the latest retelling.
“You’re lucky I didn’t turn out more emo.”
Her mother rolled
her eyes. “You’re eighteen. Your default setting is emo.”
“Touché.”
“Plus, you’re
looking at the myth all wrong, Cairn. It’s not a tragedy; it’s about being
tenacious and tough as nails and surviving in the face of insurmountable odds.
It’s about transformation. For thousands of years, our ancestors carved
out an existence in the most treacherous landscape imaginable, thriving above
the timberline where few plants could grow. They learned to make tents from
sealskin and houses from sod and igloos from ice, a different house to weather
every season. They built kayaks to fish, and fearlessly hunted whales and
caribou and polar bears for meat.” Her mother brushed a thumb along Cairn’s cheekbone.
“That ruggedness is in your blood, whether you live here in Massachusetts or
back in Canada like your grandparents. Whenever life beats you down, remember
that.”
Then it was the
final days of summer, and Cairn and her best friend Delphine rowed through the
darkness. The hulking silhouette of the old lighthouse on Demeter Island loomed
over them.
Cairn checked her
watch as they coasted into the shore. “Five minutes!”
Delphine hopped
ship onto the rocky embankment, caught the line from Cairn, and tied it to a
metal rod driven into the stone. “Relax. We’re about to have the best seats
this side of Cape Ann.”
Cairn could not
relax.
Tonight was
bigger than Delphine knew.
A padlock secured
the front door of the decommissioned lighthouse, but a month ago, they’d
snapped the original with bolt cutters and replaced it with one to which only
they possessed the key.
The two girls
clambered up the rickety spiral staircase inside until they emerged onto the
metal catwalk above. They laid down a nest of blankets and pillows and propped
themselves against the glass walls of the lantern room, the beacon within long
since dark.
“To thirteen
years of fireworks together,” Cairn toasted as she popped open a bottle of
champagne she’d pilfered from her parents’ wine cellar. The cork flew over the
railing and out of sight, to land in the water some sixty feet below. “You sure
this is safe to drink with your diabetes?”
“Absolutely not.”
Still, Delphine snatched the champagne from Cairn as it began to overflow and
took a long swig directly from the bottle.
Cairn leaned in
and wiped away the bubble mustache that had formed on Delphine’s upper lip.
“Just try not to go hyperglycemic on my ass before the finale,” she pleaded.
They were just in
time: a crack like a gunshot echoed over the bay from the south, and the first
firework exploded against the starry sky. A barrage of shells followed in red,
blue, and gold, molten confetti raining down on the water. Even a mile away,
they could hear the delighted cheers of the thousands of residents camped out
along the town beaches, all celebrating the last weekend of summer before the
school year began and autumn exhaled its first cool breath across the state.
But nobody had a
view like them.
As the display
unfolded, Cairn chanced a look at the girl beside her. The light of the
fireworks flickered over Delphine’s profile, illuminating the faint scar along
her jawline—she had taken a punch for Cairn once in a parking lot altercation
and her opponent had been wearing a mood ring.
The corner of
Delphine’s lip curved up in a slight smile. She unconsciously played with the
small conch shell through which she’d threaded her dark, curly hair.
Cairn’s pulse
thrummed in her ears. Her cheeks flushed with a warmth she couldn’t blame on
the champagne.
The pair had been
inseparable since kindergarten, when Delphine and her father immigrated to
America from Jamaica. As kids, they’d given themselves the codenames “Tropic
and Tundra.” Though born in such different climates, fate had brought them
together in a small town on Massachusetts’s northern shore.
Even as Cairn had
felt the winds of their friendship change in her heart, she tried to bury those
feelings deep. But in just a few days, Delphine would leave their coastal town
to study voice and opera at Juilliard in New York City.
Delphine finally
caught Cairn staring and cocked one eyebrow. “Care to share with the class, Ms.
Delacroix?”
Cairn had
prepared a whole speech for this moment, but what came out instead was, “Sing
for me.”
Delphine started
to protest, but she must have recognized the earnestness in Cairn’s face,
because she nodded, closed her eyes, and launched into an old jazz standard in
her soulful, seductively hoarse voice:
The rustling
dune grass,
The autumn
tides,
A blanket in
the sand,
The
star-filled sky,
Could you
imagine anything better?
The horizon’s
promise,
The sea-spray
flowers,
The dawn’s got
questions,
But tonight is
ours.
Could you
imagine anything better?
Could you
dream of anything better?
The last word
itself broke apart and dissipated into the Atlantic breeze. Delphine opened her
eyes.
Cairn took
Delphine’s hand in hers. “I’ve got this problem,” she said. She had used these
same four words every time she needed advice from Delphine. When she fought
with her parents. When a bully stalked her after school. During her ill-fated
relationship with a basketball player sophomore year.
Tonight was
different. The weight of thirteen years beared down on Cairn’s tongue. Her
mouth went dry, so she swallowed and repeated, “I’ve got this problem: I’m in
love with my best friend, but I’m terrified that saying it out loud will tear
down everything we’ve built. Do I risk it all and tell her before she leaves?
Or do I hold it in and always wonder if my life could have been just a little bit
more?”
Cairn had
envisioned this moment many times, rehearsed what she would say, prepared for a
spectrum of reactions from Delphine, ranging from reciprocation to disgust.
In all of her
fantasies and worst-case scenarios, Cairn never expected her best friend to
laugh. It burst out of Delphine in her singsong alto like she’d just heard the
funniest joke.
Tears brimmed in
Cairn’s eyes, a painful cocktail of hurt and humiliation and rage. She rose to
her feet and lunged for the door, preparing to sprint down the corkscrew stairs
and put as much distance between them as she could.
But a hand caught
her by the wrist and reeled her back onto the catwalk. Delphine spun Cairn
around and pressed her against the glass of the lantern room. Her lips hovered
over Cairn’s.
Then she kissed
her.
Cairn was in free
fall. Their lips danced uncertainly over each other at first, searching for a
common rhythm, but there was beauty in the imperfection. Delphine felt
different, tasted different than she had in any of Cairn’s dreams. She was
vaguely aware that the fireworks display had reached its bombastic finale, but
she could barely hear anything over her thundering heartbeat as she shuddered
longingly and drew Delphine deeper into her.
When Delphine
reluctantly took a breather, she cupped Cairn’s face in her hands. “The reason
I laughed,” she explained, “is because only you would wait to confess your love
until we were trapped on an island together with only one boat. Can you imagine
the awkward ride back to the mainland if I hadn’t felt the same way? Unless
your contingency plan was to maroon me here. You, Cairn Delacroix, are
irrational and impulsive and so immersed in the world your heart dreams up that
sometimes you don’t lead with your brain. But it’s for all those reasons and
more that I’ve fallen in love with you, too.”
Soon they were
both laughing out of relief. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to kiss
your stupid lips,” Cairn said.
Delphine leaned
her forehead against Cairn’s. “To thirteen years of fireworks.”
The next day,
Delphine joined Cairn’s family on a sunset ride in their boat, the Lemon
Shark. Even though her father spent most of his days examining rocks, Cairn
never saw him happier than when he stood at the helm of the old bowrider. He
accelerated up to twenty-five knots, grinning into the relentless sea wind.
As the mainland
grew smaller behind them, Ahna stared vacantly north with glazed eyes that saw
something Cairn could not. Cairn reached back and squeezed her mother’s knee.
“You seasick?”
It took Ahna a
few moments to register that Cairn was addressing her. “A tad.” She took a long
sip from her thermos of iced tea and blinked drowsily. “I think I just need to
close my eyes for a minute.”
In the distance,
Cairn spied the silhouette of Demeter Island’s lighthouse. Delphine must have
been thinking about last night, too, because she pressed her leg into Cairn’s,
a sultry grin spreading across her face. Cairn had spent the last twelve hours
wondering when they’d be able to steal their next kiss.
But then Delphine
frowned and looked past her to the rear of the boat. “Ahna?”
Cairn turned. Her
mother stood on the stern with a small anchor clutched to her chest, hugging it
like a child would a teddy bear.
When Cairn traced
the line attached to the anchor, she discovered that it was knotted around
Ahna’s ankle.
“Mom?” Cairn
wasn’t sure what was going on, but she could feel her hackles rising in alarm.
Ahna’s face still
had that confused distant pall from earlier, but now her eyes brimmed with
tears. When she tightened her grip on the anchor, a rivulet of blood snaked
down the iron, dripping from a wound somewhere on her hands. “I have to go back
to Adlivun now,” she said. Her blind gaze fell on Cairn. “For what it’s
worth, I’m sorry.”
Sensing that something
was amiss, Emile finally looked back from the cockpit. “Ahna? What are you
doing back there?”
His wife didn’t
seem to hear him. She climbed onto the transom.
“Mom?” Cairn
repeated, this time more urgently.
Without another
word, her mother took one step off the back of the boat, still hugging the
anchor, and disappeared into the sea.
Cairn was the
first to react. She dove in after her mother, entering the choppy water like a
dart.
Cairn was
disoriented at first. The saltwater stung her eyes and she had to blink several
times to adjust. She had landed in the boat’s wake, and it was initially
impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her with the propeller
churning the water. As the boat drifted farther away, she spotted the dark
shape beneath her slowly spiraling into the depths.
Cairn swam
frantically downward, arm over arm, kicking with everything she had. The ocean
pressed down around her, a suffocating, eerie silence as she descended. Her
lungs burned and she wished she’d taken a fuller breath before she’d jumped in.
She was close
enough to make out the features of her mother’s face now. Ahna had released the
anchor, letting it drag her down, and as she stared dreamily up toward her
daughter, Cairn fought through the fatigue in her muscles, ignoring the black
spots that peppered her vision, resisting the urge to open her mouth and gasp
for oxygen that wasn’t available.
They were four
lengths apart, three lengths, two lengths. Cairn wriggled the last few feet and
her fingertips hooked onto her mother’s. One last kick and she’d be close
enough to grab her by the wrist.
And then the
unthinkable happened. Her descent came to an abrupt stop. Her body jerked hard
in the water as some unseen force pulled on the waistband of her shorts. Ahna’s
fingertips slipped from her grasp.
Against her will,
Cairn rose back toward the surface, away from her mother, watching in horror as
Ahna’s mouth opened, letting the brine rush into her lungs. The bubbles of her
last breath floated past Cairn, who released a muffled, tortured scream into
the water, all the while trying to fight her way back to Ahna. Cairn thrashed
wildly until her rescuer’s elbow accidentally struck the side of her head,
subduing her.
In the stunned
vacuum that followed, she stopped screaming and watched her mother vanish into
the depths, the whites of Ahna’s unseeing eyes the last thing to be swallowed
by the dark.
Cairn breached
the surface with Delphine, who hugged her torso with one arm and used the other
to paddle hard, keeping them both afloat. She sobbed and drew in a deep breath,
preparing to submerge again, but Delphine’s hold on her tightened. “No, Cairn!”
she shouted into her waterlogged ears. “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”
“There’s still
time,” Cairn pleaded. “There’s still …” But the last word eluded her as she
collapsed into anguished tears, her rag-doll body quaking, all the fight
drained from her. Her father screamed hysterically as he turned the boat
around, but Cairn couldn’t hear him. She hardly noticed the life preserver land
in the water next to them.
“I won’t lose
you, too,” Delphine said, her voice quivering. Unexpectedly, she began to hum a
lullaby to Cairn while her father tugged them both back toward the boat. As
shock cascaded in from all sides, as Cairn stared at the now still spot in the
water where Ahna vanished into the wake, she thought that her friend was wrong:
Delphine had already lost her.
Because the girl
they pulled from the water that day was just a wispy, fragile husk of the one
who dived in.
About Karsten:
Karsten Knight is the author of the
historical mystery NIGHTINGALE, SING, the time-traveling thriller PATCHWORK,
and the Polynesian volcano goddess trilogy WILDEFIRE (Simon &
Schuster)--though some say his writing career peaked at the age of six, when he
completed a picture book series about an adventurous worm. He is a graduate of
College of the Holy Cross and earned an MFA in writing for children from
Simmons College. Karsten resides in Boston, where he lives for fall weather,
bowling, and football season. For more information on Karsten or his books,
please visit www.karstenknightbooks.com.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
Giveaway Details:
1 winner
will win a $10 Amazon GC, International.
Tour
Schedule:
Week
One:
5/25/2020
|
Excerpt
|
|
5/25/2020
|
Excerpt
|
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5/26/2020
|
Review
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5/26/2020
|
Excerpt
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5/26/2020
|
Instagram Stop
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5/27/2020
|
Review
|
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5/27/2020
|
Review
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5/28/2020
|
Review
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5/28/2020
|
Review
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5/29/2020
|
Review
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5/29/2020
|
Review
|
Week
Two:
6/1/2020
|
Instagram Stop
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6/1/2020
|
Review
|
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6/1/2020
|
Excerpt
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6/2/2020
|
Review
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6/2/2020
|
Instagram Stop
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6/3/2020
|
Review & Instagram Stop
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6/3/2020
|
Excerpt
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6/4/2020
|
Review
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6/4/2020
|
Excerpt
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6/5/2020
|
Review
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6/5/2020
|
Instagram Stop
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