Arete

Books 9-12 in the Attican series of novels for teenagers and young adults

Hundreds of years have passed since the time of Lien, and Attica is a world becoming duller as it ages. True histories of a glorious past when gods walked the lands have been relegated to fantastical fiction by the ‘scientists’ of the day, and when even the likes of Arete are missing, presumed mythical, there seems little opposition to the relentless advance of spiritual monotheism and secular ‘progress’.

In modern Avenel, the greatest source of excitement, employment and premature violent death comes from the ongoing power-struggle between the warlord Dragon, now the bearer of Reveil, and the Magnus, an ancient organisation Lien reinvented with the best of intentions yet now has world domination on the agenda.

But the lives of Avenel’s mortals are still very much subject to the machinations of the angels, demons and Essene – some of who have also the linked world of Earth on their agenda this time around. Another celestial game of chess is underway, and the first pawn on the board is a simple housewife who is thrust into this new world of violence and politics in search of Arete. Having established that the immortal figure is in fact real, Kunata then has to try to keep her alive – a surprisingly difficult task given Arete’s suicidal determination to get herself killed.

And that’s only the first step in a series of events that will see Arete and her new companions – the soon-to-be widowed Kunata, sociopath mercenary Stella, schizophrenic Linli (or Sailor, or Raven, depending on who’s in) and Lien’s great-great-something-grand daughter Dexte – forced to finish the battles that Lien and his contemporaries started centuries earlier.

Yet even as her friends help her find the strength to fight once more in defence of Attica, Arete finds herself losing the most important battle of all – the war within, which will determine whether she can regain the will to live.

Book 9: The War Within
Book 10: The Sacred Wound
Book 11: The Tolling Bell
Book 12: The Patient Angel