This is the first book of the Mid-Sea Chronicles, the adventures of Tiranu Shupari, a Sun Priest/Magician in the Mid-Sea Empire, son of the King-of-Kings, Zelim the Mighty, whom he put on the throne after a lengthy civil war three years previous to this tale. In this volume, he is sent from the City-of-Gold, the Imperial capital, on a secret journey 900 miles south, to the City-of-Winds, at the tip of the Mid-Sea, to aid rebels in overthrowing the Governor-for-Life there because he has just declared for the Emperor's most potent foe, the grandson of Tatenos Totori, who held the throne just before Zelim. However, the ship he's on is scuttled at sea and Tiranu is forced into the water along with his faithful bodyguard, Barth Jarrow. They make it to shore, but find they are in an area infested with dragons and man-eating birds with wing-spans of 30-feet. To make matters worse, it is discovered that Tiranu escaped and he is chased by his enemies through the Wilderness. However, he does have friends, namely an Immortal, Tara, who has taken an interest in him since he was born. This tale and all the others are told by his younger brother, Tjamoo Shupari, also a Sun Priest, nearly a century after these events take place. He has made it his life-work to collect the tales of his brother, edit them, and publish them. As he says in his introduction, "Tiranu was a very human hero with superhuman talents." This first book is part of a trilogy. The second two books, THE WARLORD OF NEDUNG BETAR and THE PIRATE KING OF TRELAG SZUU have been written. They merely need editing, so they should be published within the year of this one. This series has lots of magic, lots of monsters, and lots of metaphysical truths that the reader will enjoy discovering.
About the Author: Raji Dorotez, born in Virginia in 1947, was an Army brat from the moment of his birth. He spent most of his youth overseas in Europe, the Orient, and Hawaii shortly after it became a state. When he returned to the Mainland for the final time he was 17 and it felt like he was coming to an unknown country. His country moved to the Deep South just in time for the Civil Rights Movement, which affected him greatly. He spent one year at a Southern college before giving academia up to flee to the North where he got swept up in the Youth Movement of the 60s. He came to California in 1969 and has made it his home since. He is a long-time Gay and Pagan activist, but everything he writes is not Gay. He is the author of THE SCARLET WAND, Sex Magic For Gay Males; THE SCARLET PENTAGRAM, Rituals For Gay Males; the novel SPIRIT-WALK, about a shaman on another world who goes on a "spirit-walk" and visits this world five centuries from now and learns tolerance and understanding from his journey; and the BULLDOG series, about a biker who is killed by his old lady, but is too full of life to die and comes back as a ghost, wanting all the things he wanted when he was still alive. One is published now, but there will be at least eight in the series. This series, unlike his other books, is not for the faint of heart. Sex scenes are described graphically in the early books, but in the later ones, Bulldog begins to transcend and the books become more spiritual. Dorotez has created a web site for his books: www.rajidorotezpress.com. Check it out for free sample stories, new books he's writing, and old books he's digging out of boxes that he forgot about which he's willing to sell. Many of his earlier books, for example, THE SCARLET PENTAGRAM and RENEWAL CEREMONY are selling on-line by their current owners for much more than he originally sold them for. Enthusiastic fans have posted some of his earlier stuff on-line for free. As he was out of the loop for fifteen years while he lived off-the-grid on a remote hill in the Sierra Foothills, with no electricity, internet, nor flush toilet, many fans thought he was dead. But he isn't. He's very much alive and tells people he wasn't inactive during those fifteen years. He was writing story after story, novel after novel, and tucking them aside and going on with the next. Having discovered the internet, he is now busily editing and publishing all those things he wrote during his hermitage, and finding that they spurn more.