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A Note to the Reader
What are portals and what do they signify? I am writing these notes while working on Bramah’s Discovery, eager to complete the manuscript before the Year End Portal turns! It’s a cold, still, moonlit night. I’ve always thought of portals, well-known in the epic fantasy world, as places or moments in time that loom large with significance. The portals in this book open into different time dimensions, carrying characters from one place to another, dropping them down into a battle, a dungeon or a chance encounter.
Last week, before the big rains arrived, from the living room window, looking out over a small park, I watched two house finches perched on the moss-covered branches of a slender honey locust tree: two males with orange-banded heads and orange shading on their breasts. The birds flicked their tail feathers in the rain. This small moment of noticing nature, in the midst of world-building an epic with many characters, represents a rhythm: stillness and attention, beauty and serenity alternating with the lived experience of eco-catastrophe and change. Those birds found what shelter they could before the deluge of a Pacific atmospheric river. That’s what the characters in this book do: they find shelter, even, maybe hope, in the midst of war, loss and climate change.
Two underlying themes anchor this book: the nature of self-discovery in the midst of a global crisis and an examination of the possible links between sacrifice and hope. What is the nature of hope? How do we remain hopeful in the midst of agony and loss? Do we believe in last-minute reprieves and second chances? These are the struggles of Bramah, time-travelling locksmith, reckoning with her demigoddess self, somehow, against the odds, still believing. She’s asking herself and those on his journey, how do we have hope when the game is stacked against us, when by our own actions we limit the chance of future survival?
—Renée
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Lives Lived THOT J BAP: Book Three
| Name | Birth | Death | Age of Death |
| Amahl the Beggar | unverified | ||
| Sonali | 2103 | ||
| Rafe of the Fifth | 2088 | 2110 | 22 years |
| Al-Rashid | classified: rumoured to be in his late forties | ||
| The Grand Vizier | classified: rumoured to be in his early sixties | ||
| Bramah | un/known | ||
| Guards of the Fifth Gate | unavailable | ||
| Seed Savers, Beggars, Resisters | undocumented | ||
| The Supernaturals | information withheld, released only on the pain of death |
© Renée Sarojini Saklikar 2021.
© Nadina Tandy Cover Art. © Top Shelf Creative Book Design.
© Nightwood Editions 2021. © Isaac Yuen Website Design. All rights reserved.
THOT J BAP 