Title: The Wrath of Monsters
Author: Dan Rice
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Book Blurb
Can Allison and her friends save the world without becoming monsters?
Allison hoped her life would be free of torment after escaping the faeries. No sooner than Allison and her friends return home, the government imprisons Bria and Haji on a military base where scientists experiment on them. Allison’s plan to rescue them backfires when she reveals Bria’s location to the faeries, who mount a raid to capture the faery child. With Bria’s blood, they can create more enthralled super magicians to wage war against humanity. The attack on the military base is just the beginning. When an electromagnetic pulse knocks out the power for the west coast of the United States, it is clear more powerful foes than the faeries are invading Earth.
The Wrath of Monsters is the third installment in the award-winning series The Allison Lee Chronicles. With a bit of good fortune, the fourth and final volume in the series will be available in the summer of 2025.
Excerpt
Remote school is deadly…for my mental health. So is being locked up in my room. Of course, I choose to be locked up in my bedroom, but still. I never chose to have security agents, some of them actual magicians, stalking me through the house twenty-four by seven. I never asked for any of it, but here I am, staring at my laptop’s screen, trying to do pre-calculus homework. The problem is I can’t make heads or tails out of linear equations and logarithmic functions.
My hand strays from my wireless mouse to my camera on the study table beside the laptop. My fingers brush against the device’s cool metallic and rubberized body. I’d love to go outside to take pictures, but I need permission to leave the house from Agent-in-charge Leroy McAllister. Sometimes I wish that man had his neck twisted like fusilli, I really do, but then I remember Agent Deveraux’s neck misshapen like that, and acid rises up my throat. My hand goes to my chest. My throat and back of my mouth burn.
I stand and reach for the laptop to close it but stop myself. Dalia promised to help me with my math homework. She might video call or message me any time now. Instead, I wrap my fingers around the camera’s grip and enjoy the tactile nature of the rubber. My go-to photographic subject is a precarious stack of dirty dishes on the tabletop behind the computer. The acid on my tongue turns me off from photographing anything remotely related to food.
I try to take all my meals in my room; it’s the only place I won’t have an agent watching my every move. I glance around the bedroom, eyeballing every corner. Presumably, they don’t watch me while I’m here. I wouldn’t believe them, except I’ve scoured every nook and cranny of the room with my prosthetic eyes, zooming in and out, and searching for heat signatures or the lack thereof in IR mode. Never found anything. I wouldn’t put it past the magicians from the UN Draconic Task Force to surreptitiously observe me by magical means, but my father, who is the last remaining archmagus, ensures me they aren’t watching. If I can believe him after sixteen-plus years of lies.
Sighing, I pick up my camera and cross the room, stepping on dirty and clean clothes to the head of my unmade bed. Next to the pillow, a giant kitty cat stuffy stares at me with unblinking eyes. I flip the cat around, so it stares at the wall. I pull up the blind shading the window on the wall behind the head of the bed and am greeted by another day of March gloom: endless gray clouds and drizzle. Nothing inspiring to photograph, but at least the crowd I hear from the street in front of the house protesting my existence probably numbers less than twenty instead of closer to one hundred. The increased security since I was kidnapped by a team of magician commandos led by none other than my nemesis Gore, a drug-crazed magic-wielding assassin, has the wonderful silver lining of keeping most of my detractors and fans at bay.
The room is stuffy, so I open the window. The cold outside air caresses my cheeks, bringing with it the scent of rain and automobile exhaust from the main drag a quarter mile up the street. Nose crinkling, I slam the window shut.
A sharp rap comes from the door. “Is everything okay in there?”
I wince at the high-pitched voice of Valentina Lopez, Draconic Task Force agent and a magician of unknown ability. As long as she keeps her magic to herself and her mouth shut, Valentina is tolerable. But whenever I hear her overly feminine voice, I wish she was sucked down the kaleidoscopic black hole displayed on the poster adorning my door.
“Just airing out the room.”
I cross the room and flop down in my chair. Placing my elbows on the desk, I massage my temples and stare at the linear equations on the screen. My eyes lose focus, the numbers, letters, and mathematical symbols slithering into pen and ink faeries, dragons, and skaags. The creatures whorl into a true monster, a doctor with her face hidden behind a mask. Gasping, I slam the laptop shut. The sleeper ripples inside me, making my skin feel like it crawls from the inside out. The beast wants out to rend flesh from bones, but I can’t allow that. My half-skaag form, a cross between a super-sized alligator and a gargantuan eel, is small compared to a full-blooded skaag, but it is still large enough to destroy my room and probably bring the entire house down in the process.
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Author Biography
Dan Rice pens the young adult urban fantasy series The Allison Lee Chronicles in the wee hours of the morning. The series kicks off with his award-winning debut, Dragons Walk Among Us, which Kirkus Reviews calls, “An inspirational and socially relevant fantasy.”
While not pulling down the 9 to 5 or chauffeuring his soccer fanatic sons to practices and games, Dan enjoys photography and hiking through the wilderness.
To discover more about Dan’s writing and keep tabs on his upcoming releases, check out his blog and join his newsletter.
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Website: https://www.danscifi.com