by Julia Ember
Genre: YA Fantasy
Release Date: April 21st 2016
Harmony Ink Press
Summary from Goodreads:
After a savage attack drives her from her home, sixteen-year-old Mnemba finds a place in her cousin Tumelo’s successful safari business, where she quickly excels as a guide. Surrounding herself with nature and the mystical animals inhabiting the savannah not only allows Mnemba’s tracking skills to shine, it helps her to hide from the terrible memories that haunt her.
Mnemba is employed to guide Mr. Harving and his daughter, Kara, through the wilderness as they study unicorns. The young women are drawn to each other, despite that fact that Kara is betrothed. During their research, they discover a conspiracy by a group of poachers to capture the Unicorns and exploit their supernatural strength to build a railway. Together, they must find a way to protect the creatures Kara adores while resisting the love they know they can never indulge.
EXCERPT
I scanned the
earth, looking for snapped branches and flattened grass. Once off the
path, the plants grew too thick for me to see the chimera’s tracks
from horseback, but I didn’t dare dismount again. If we stumbled
upon the creature, the last place I wanted to be was on the ground.
Elikia trudged through the thick foliage, shaking her head as
mosquitos buzzed around her nostrils. Behind me, the Dyers swatted at
insects on each other’s backs.
A deep rumble shook
the ground beneath our horses’ hooves. My heart froze, and I turned
in my saddle to face a moss-covered outcrop. Staring down at us from
above, the chimera licked her front paws and stretched out in the
sun, enormous belly bulging with meat. Her snake-headed tail
continued to feed as she rested, gulping down dark strips of red and
gray flesh from the tattered elephant carcass lying beside her.
A few hundred feet
away, the elephant’s herd milled about in the trees, sadly waiting
to venerate their friend’s skeleton once the huge cat had finished
her meal.
“Where’s my
sketchbook?” Suzette whispered to her husband. “Can you get it
out of your saddlebag?”
I shook my head at
Paul before he could climb down. As much as I would have loved to
shove a drawing of the chimera in Oswe’s smug face, the last thing
we needed was to pique the creature’s interest by dismounting.
Paul’s horse
stamped at the ground, trying to shake the bugs off his legs.
The chimera’s
purple eyes snapped open. Her pupils dilated with interest, and she
sniffed at the air. The snake tail hissed and a low, rocky growl
formed in the great cat’s throat. Her lips parted, revealing
yellow, stained canines each the length of my index finger.
Buy Links:
Amazon│Harmony Ink Press
About the Author
Originally from Chicago, Julia
Ember now resides in Sunny Scotland where she learned to enjoy both haggis and
black pudding. She spends her days working as a professional Book Nerd for a
large book wholesaler, and her nights writing YA Romantic Fantasy novels. She
also spends an inordinate amount of time managing her growing city-based
menagerie of pets with Harry Potter themed names.
A world traveller since
childhood, Julia has now visited over 60 countries. Her travels inspire the
fictional worlds she writes about and she populates those worlds with magic and
monsters.
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