Ignifer's Rise: Book 1 of the Ignifer Cycle
About this ebook
The apocalypse is coming.
Ignifer's Mons is the city at the center of the world, swarmed by a thousand strange castes, from debt-collecting Molemen to stone-bodied Balasts. All are crushed beneath the city's brutal law, and watched over by a gaping black hole in the sky; the Rot.
Sen is a boy condemned to death for his caste; complex scars that cover every inch of his skin. Hunted by the Rot, he hides in the city's last abbey, sheltered by misshapen Sisters who lie to keep him alive. But he can't hide forever. His scars predict the coming apocalypse, and offer an impossible path to salvation: only the legendary hero Saint Ignifer can save them.
But the Saint died millennia ago, and the castes he once led into battle are divided. All that remains is a lost and confused boy, piecing together clues he doesn't understand. Yet in the depths of the city's abandoned heart, in the long-buried ruins of an ancient civilization, destiny waits for Sen- for the end is coming, and the Saint must rise again.
Readers have said:
- "... this stunning fantasy gripped me by my brainstrings right from the start! I loved it, and hope that there might be a second one?" - Chris.
- "When you've finished, you'll want to take the protagonist and hug him and tell him everything will be okay." - Diane.
- "... this book is touching, exhilarating, beautiful and heart-wrenching. An excellent read and well worth the many nights I never went to bed just to read on!." - Bethany.
About the author
Michael John Grist is a British science-fiction & fantasy author, and ruins photographer who lived in Tokyo, Japan for 11 years, and now lives in London, England.
http://www.michaeljohngrist.
He used to explore and photograph the modern ruined buildings of Japan, known as haikyo (AKA urbex), driven by a childhood spent re-enacting the adventures of Indiana Jones and the Goonies in the fields behind his house.
Some of the 70 or so locations he's visited include abandoned theme parks, military installations, ruins of the sex industry, and ghost towns.
Michael was born in Manchester, England, to an American mother and British father. He was raised in Bolton, where as a kid he wrote snippets of fantasy stories and explored the horse's field behind his house. Nothing much has changed since then, except the snippets became full stories and the horse's field got a whole lot bigger.
In his childhood summers he visited his family in Kentucky, where he learnt how to make s'mores, enjoyed night-time hay-rides, and worked in his uncle's bike shop. In his late teens he worked at a summer camp for disadvantaged kids in Massachusetts, and after graduating high school in the UK he went (glutton for punishment, yes) to high school again, in Indiana, on an exchange program for two semesters. It was there that he first took creative writing classes, and started work on his first novel (which is now maturing on his hard drive like a fine wine). He also took a Greyhound trip around the country (six days and nights on a bus), which reinforced his thirst for exploration.
Now he enjoys the odd game of squash and badminton, working out in the gym, and of course writing stories and novels. He lives in north London with his wife, and works as an English lecturer at university.