Title: Ash Like Vengeance (The Revere Trilogy #2)
Author: J.L. Delavega
Genre: Fantasy / Weird Western
Book Blurb:
The history books telling the story of a fell-fated expedition to the West Rim won’t remember the name of the Stranger, a woman who loved her family and worshiped her freedom. But the rest of the Rim will.
Adelaide stalks the men responsible for her capture in the mining settlement where she was born. The longer she stays, the stronger her shadow, the Stranger, becomes and the bloodier the legend she will leave behind.
Tesla has found sanctuary with old friends, but not peace. Progress waits for no woman to load her gun. Using the journals written by the woman who unleashed the pestilence years ago, she and Adelaide’s sisters attempt what the original chemist failed to create.
To get Adelaide back, a dangerous alliance must be made and a train heist pulled on the most difficult mark they’ve ever targeted.
It’s time for the men who once bought protection and smuggled goods to remember why the name Revere was the last on so many dying lips, and the rails are not safe not matter what the Green Contract Company tells you.
So let it be dark. Let it be bloody. Let us pray.
For red is the color of revenge.
Excerpt:
ARRIVAL
My name is Adelaide Revere. I am twenty-two, hair like moonlit bone. It’s been one hundred and twenty-six days since I buried my sister Vesta outside Winchester, and my eyes are still gray. I don’t have the pestilence. But all this time I’ve been seeing blood, breathing smoke. There are only two colors now. The ground in Hannah, black. Everything else, steeped in red. But red is the color of revenge. Welcome back.
ONE
ADELAIDE
The Stranger splays up the four corners of the alley, iron smoke. Not a dead end, it just looks like one. Four corners make people buying dangerous things feel safe. She spills out of me more often these days, blacking out edges, tired of this bullshit. So am I. My spoon chime lists outside the curtain clouding the alley entrance from the air market and soup camp, empty promises. Never sell from the same spot two days in a row. People who want what I have just have to know what to look for. Sunlight comes through breaks in the wall and over the peaked roofs, red, slanted. It’s always dusk in Hannah. The refinery towers on the fool-made hill breathe out black smoke with a stability even the wind doesn’t have the strength to clear. Every crack bleeds black ash, lips and fingernails crusted with it. A second skin that never washes off. The man in front of me breathes heavily, and I draw my thumb around the pommel of the knife hidden against my back. Four passes. Five… He doesn’t really see me. His gaze drips across the muzzle locked around my jaw to the gray skin of my neck. “Fool’s gold, fox, stop holding out on me.” On my table lie the things I’ve stolen. Two clip-point knives and one folding. A string of keys for those who can’t pick locks, sleeping tablets, sugar, a tin of butter, my last two Ven crystals. They look black, not blue, in this wasted light.
This picker doesn’t get to know about the revolver I stole yesterday. I know what he’s after.
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Author’s bookstore for signed copies: www.jldelavega.com
What makes your featured book a must-read?
Meet a western where the women are not the sidekicks, the love interest or the damsels. They’re the outlaws. Welcome to the Rim.
Giveaway –
Enter to win a $45 Amazon gift card:
Open Internationally.
Runs December 18 – December 31, 2023.
Winner will be drawn on January 2, 2024.
Author Biography:
J.L. Delavega is the dark fantasy author of SMOKE AND OTHER STORMS and ASH LIKE VENGEANCE.
Her bones belong to the desert and mountains, but her soul belongs to cats. When not writing she makes other stuff and believes Victorian era fashion should absolutely make a comeback, as long as sweatpants still exist. She loves the smell of hot pines and vowel sounds, which are the most interesting part of language.
Her work has been recognized for its brave feminist stance and was a finalist for the CIBA OZMA (2022).
She could say she makes all her own clothes but that would be a lie.
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Instagram: @ninjenaiyauthor
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