Joshua Phillip Johnson, THE FOREVER SEA author
I'm joined in this episode by Joshua Phillip Johnson, author of THE FOREVER SEA. This startlingly unique fantasy novel takes place in a water-scarce world completely covered by endless vegetation, where\u2014instead of oceans\u2014magically powered ships sail seas of miles-tall prairie grass.
Kindred Greyreach is a sailor and young apprentice hearthfire keeper, using fire and bone fueled magic to power a harvesting vessel. But Kindred's deep understanding of the fire's own mystic language is unique among keepers\u2014as is her creative, impulsive, and sometimes dangerous approach to solving problems.
Kindred learns that her estranged grandmother\u2014a venerable ship's captain and hearthkeeper\u2014willingly stepped off her own boat and disappeared into the vast sea. But she learns that what appears to be suicide may have been her grandmother's quest to discover something hidden in the depths below.
Chasing her grandmother's cryptic legacy forces Kindred to the center of a cultural water war, pushes her past safe seas to a mythic pirate city, and drives her to battle with great beasts of the deep. But will the answers she seek be worth the sacrifice of everything she loves \u2014\xa0her ship, her found family, a life sailing under the sun \u2014 or does madness await in the endless dark depths?
THE FOREVER SEA\xa0is a debut fantasy novel and first in a series of the same name, available January 19th from DAW Books:
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About Joshua Phillip JohnsonJoshua Phillip Johnson lives in a little green house on what used to be the prairie with his partner and their child. His work has appeared in Syntax & Salt, The Future Fire, and Metaphorosis Magazine, among others. He teaches at a small liberal arts university. The Forever Sea is his first novel.
Follow Joshua Phillip Johnson About\xa0THE FOREVER SEAThe first book in a new environmental epic fantasy series set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.
On the never-ending, miles-high expanse of prairie grasses known as the Forever Sea, Kindred Greyreach, hearthfire keeper and sailor aboard harvesting vessel The Errant, is just beginning to fit in with the crew of her new ship when she receives devastating news. Her grandmother\u2014The Marchess, legendary captain and hearthfire keeper\u2014has stepped from her vessel and disappeared into the sea.
But the note she leaves Kindred suggests this was not an act of suicide. Something waits in the depths, and the Marchess has set out to find it.
To follow in her grandmother\u2019s footsteps, Kindred must embroil herself in conflicts bigger than she could imagine: a water war simmering below the surface of two cultures; the politics of a mythic pirate city floating beyond the edges of safe seas; battles against beasts of the deep, driven to the brink of madness; and the elusive promise of a world below the waves.
Kindred finds that she will sacrifice almost everything\u2014ship, crew, and a life sailing in the sun\u2014to discover the truth of the darkness that waits below the Forever Sea.