I am happy to be hosting a stop on the blog tour for WEST by Edith Pattou! I have an excerpt to share with you today check it out and enter to win the giveaway below!
About The Book:
In the sequel to the beloved high fantasy East, Rose sets off on a perilous journey to find her true love when he goes missing in a thrilling tale of danger, magic, adventure, and revenge.
When Rose first met Charles, he was trapped in the form of a white bear. To rescue him, Rose traveled to the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon to defeat the evil Troll Queen. Now Rose has found her happily-ever-after with Charles—until a sudden storm destroys his ship and he is presumed dead. But Rose doesn’t believe the shipwreck was an act of nature, nor does she believe Charles is truly dead. Something much more sinister is at work. With mysterious and unstoppable forces threatening the lives of the people she loves, Rose must once again set off on a perilous journey. And this time, the fate of the entire world is at stake.
Now on to the excerpt!
Rose
“’Tis a north wind,” came a voice beside me.
“Is it?” I said.
“Yes,” said Sib, “with a bit of west mixed in.”
I turned to smile at Sib, who had come to stand beside me at the ship’s
railing. Sib was one of the so‐called “softskin” servants who had escaped Niflheim after the destruction of the Troll
Queen’s ice palace. Three years had passed since she came to live with Charles
and me in Fransk.
We had become fast friends, and in many ways, I was closer to her than
to any of my siblings, except my brother Neddy, of course. Her true name was
Sibhoirdeas, but she said that most who had known her called her Sib.
“That’s Neddy’s direction,” I said with a smile. “Northwest.”
Sib returned my smile, for she knew all about the unusual birth
direction superstition of my mother’s family that had been so much a part of my
growing up in Njord, that the direction a woman faced when giving birth shaped
the personality of the child. My mother never wanted a north‐facing bairn, who
would be wild and headstrong with a love for adventuring, but that’s exactly
what I had been. Mother, however, had refused to accept this and was determined
that I should be an east‐born child. I didn’t learn of my true north nature until I was older.
“This northwest wind suits you,” Sib said. “Though perhaps not as well
as a pure north wind.
But you look happy, Rose.”
I nodded. It was our sixth day on the ship called Guillemot, which was taking us to Trondheim. It was my
first visit home since Winn’s birth and only the second since Charles and I had
been married.
“I will be seeing my family soon,” I said. “And Winn will meet his
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.”
I smiled down on the sleeping face of my bairn, who was swaddled in a
sling over my shoulders. It still made me catch my breath, looking at those
almost translucent eyelids lined with golden lashes.
I gazed out over the expanse of Njordsjoen again. It was choppy, a deep
blue almost to blackness, but this too made me catch my breath. The open sea.
How I had missed it, the salty wind in my face, the call of the gulls.
These past three years had been happy ones for my white bear and me,
carving out a life for ourselves in Fransk. Yet there were moments now and then
when that old restlessness would overtake me, and I would be driven to strap on
my boots and go wandering through the countryside.
Charles understood. “If it wasn’t for your wild nature, I would still
be a white bear. Or worse,”
he once said to me, when I had finished apologizing for being gone
overlong.
Even after the birth of Winn, my white bear accepted my wanderlust. He
would just brush my forehead with his lips and say, “Off with you.”
I loved our bairn with all my heart, knew from the moment I kissed that
wrinkled, damp face for the first time that I would have given my life for him.
But at the same time, it was perhaps the hardest test I had ever faced,
balancing my wild, northern nature with that love. Because that is the truth of
a bairn, that they need you, body and soul, and I was tethered to him in a way
I had never known.
Charles felt the same way, but for him being tethered was exactly what
he wanted. Having roots, a home he could call his own, after almost one hundred
and fifty years of roaming the world as a white bear, was all the happiness he
desired.
It was odd, I suppose, that I still sometimes called him White Bear,
but I did. Charles didn’t come easily to my tongue. It was as if that person
taken from his life by the Troll Queen so long ago was something of a stranger
to me, and in some deep down way, I would always think of him as a white bear.
I would occasionally slip. The first time I actually called him White
Bear after we were wed, he flinched. But then he smiled.
“So be it,” he said, pulling me to him. “After all, it was as a white
bear that I first loved you.”
“And I you,” I whispered into his shoulder.
I’m embarrassed to say, however, that most often I called him such
things as “my love” and
“dear.” Hardly words I would ever have imagined myself saying back when
I was young and wild, climbing trees and falling into ponds.
Sib broke into my thoughts, telling me that she had just checked on
Estelle and that the herbal remedies Sib had given her had done nothing to
relieve the girl’s seasickness.
“Poor Estelle,” I said. And indeed Estelle had had a rough time this
past year. When her mother, Sofi, had died unexpectedly of a wasting sickness,
there were no relatives left to care for her, her uncle Serge having emigrated
to Spania. Charles and I were happy to bring her into our family. We loved her
dearly, and she was a resilient girl. Still, the loss of her mother had been
hard.
We thought a journey to Njord would be a welcome distraction, and
because she had always longed to see the world, Estelle was thrilled at the
prospect. Until we boarded the Guillemot. With the first roll of the ship, she
had been laid low by seasickness.
About Edith:
Edith Pattou is the author of Ghosting, a contemporary novel for young
adults, told in free verse. She also wrote three award-winning fantasy novels
for young adults – East, a retelling of the Norwegian folk
tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," and the two Songs of
Eirren, Hero’s Song and Fire Arrow. She is also the
author of the New York Times bestselling picture book, Mrs. Spitzer’s Garden.
She was born in Evanston, Illinois, grew up in Winnetka, and was a
teenager in the city of Chicago where she attended Francis W. Parker School.
She completed her B.A. at Scripps College in Claremont, California where she
won the Crombie Allen Award for creative writing. She later completed a Masters
degree in English Literature at Claremont Graduate School, followed by a
Masters of Library and Information Science at UCLA.
She has worked for a medical association, a clothing boutique, a
recording studio, the Playboy Foundation, a public television station, a school
library, two public libraries, two advertising agencies, and two bookstores.
She has lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, Durham, NC, Cambridge,
England, Stockholm, Sweden, and currently resides with her husband, Charles, in
Columbus, Ohio.
Giveaway Details:
3 Winners will receive a finished copy of WEST, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
10/15/2018- Rhythmicbooktrovert- Review
10/16/2018- A Backwards Story- Interview
10/17/2018- Forever Lost in Literature- Review
10/18/2018- Mythical
Books- Excerpt
10/19/2018- Patriotic Bookaholic- Excerpt
Week Two:
10/22/2018- Read.
Eat. Love.- Review
10/23/2018- Dani
Reviews Things- Excerpt
10/24/2018- Adventures and Reading- Review
10/25/2018- BookHounds YA- Interview
10/26/2018- Jena
Brown Writes- Review
Week Three:
10/29/2018- Ace Reads- Excerpt
10/30/2018- Novel
Novice- Excerpt
10/31/2018- All the Ups and Downs- Excerpt
11/1/2018- Rockin' Book Reviews- Review
11/2/2018- Paws
and Paperbacks- Review
Week Four:
11/5/2018- Smada's Book Smack- Review
11/6/2018- if
the book will be too difficult- Excerpt
11/7/2018- Vesper
Dreams- Excerpt
11/8/2018- Oh Hey!
Books.- Review
