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Vlogentia
Wm W Somers
October 2020 978-1-7357879-0-9DESCRIPTION:
Over four hundred year ago a Mayan village in the Yucatan was fleeing from the Inquisition and found the portal, a way to transfer to a world similar to ours in a parallel universe.
They called
this new home Second World. They settled there and founded a
peaceful realm named Vlogentia, named after their
founder.
But now, four hundred or more years later, a new king has been crowned. He has grandiose plans for conquest, but he needs to raise an immense army to do so and devises a devious plan to accomplish his goals.
At the same
time Bianca was looking forward to the New Year’s Day festival.
She’d play her favorite Mesoamerican ball game with her team in the
capital city’s Grand Ballcourt in front of the city’s religious and
cultural elite. The game and
the day goes well until she is kidnapped by agents of the
king.
Together with Jason and Margaret, two equally unwilling captives kidnapped from our universe and whom the king means to assist in his plot, she has to thwart the threat to her life and discover a way to return to the capital and foil the king’s plan.
Then after all
this the three friends would discover
an even greater danger to the portal that links our universes
and possibly the very existence of Second World. It would take all
their ingenuity and courage to counter this threat and reestablish
the peaceful coexistence of the two universes.
EXCERPT:
The Battle for Natts' Moloch
Muulo'ob
As the captain was organizing the men, the kulkulcano’ob arrived. It now was almost sunset and the trolls would be coming soon. Kulkulcano’ob rarely flew out of the mountain passes, and had never before seen in a group. They were impressive. Five sets of sixty-five foot wingspans side by side give the defenders a large shot of confidence. They landed just outside the wall alongside the body of Ill’yx with a noticeable tremor of the ground and the sound of five sets of wings slapping .
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The kulkulcano’ob had barely settled into their positions when the trolls swarmed out of the lower mountain passes and made for the town.
Onward the attack came. As Captain Perez had planned, the trolls saw the way into the city beyond the body of a dead kulkulcan. That should have give them pause, but it didn’t. As the first wave reached the rubble at the base of the wall, the skirmishers fired their crossbows twice and retreated inside. Crossbow bolts then rained down on the trolls from the ramparts. Bianca could hear the clink of the bolts as they penetrated the armor of the trolls, followed by the grunts and squeals of the injured.Once the trolls were through the gap and into the town the defenders lashed out with everything they had.
The main defense line formed the shield wall about fifteen yards from the gap in the wall to halt the advance and began stabbing the trolls with short spears or cutting at them with swords. They were the city guard and moderately well disciplined. They held firm. The flank attacks from the other townspeople behind their ramshackle barricade caught the trolls by surprise and forced them into a disorganized mass trapped between the flank attacks and the shield wall. Then the surprise. Two kulkulcan leapt into the air and let loose with a blast of fire into the mass of trolls before furling their wings and dropping alongside the townsfolk and tearing into the vermin and taking vengeance for all the stolen eggs and dead young. Jaws snapped shut with a metallic clang, taking two or three trolls at a time. Their claws ripped every which way. The two others fell on the rear of the troll horde, compressing them even further into the trap.
Trolls fought back with a desperate ferocity. The stench from their mouths was like month old rotten meat, it could knock a man back by itself.A bite from of the lizard/troll could prove septic. They bit, they slashed with their claws, they flailed with their tails and they even tried to crush with their arms if a man got too close.They’d crawl over each other to get at a man.
Once the kulkulcano’ob were on the ground, they became vulnerable to attack from the sides. Trolls tried to rip off the wings and jump on their backs. The men would then attack while the trolls were thus occupied, killing them from behind.
The fighting was ferocious. After a while the flank battles became more disorganized as trolls managed to push through or clamber over the barricades. The humans pushed back. The trolls counterattacked. The combat degenerated into a melee. The shield wall was starting to yield ground under the constant pressure of hundreds of trolls. There was grappling, stabbing, slashing and biting everywhere and from all sides. The yells and screams of the men mixed with the grunts and hisses of the trolls and the near constant clanging of kulkulcan teeth biting a troll was deafening.
Ill’yonix, perched on the roof of a nearby house, saw a group of trolls pushing the humans’ shield wall back into the residential area of the city. It was time.
He dove into the midst of the mass of trolls and began to wreck destruction of his own, his great jaws snapping shut and turning trolls into fragments. But five trolls seized the opportunity and latched onto his wings, which he had not had time to furl as he landed. This limited his fighting ability since he couldn’t use his front legs with his wings extended.
Bianca saw his plight from the boulder she was now standing on, which up until now had been out of the fight. Ill’yonix was only a few feet away and in danger. She gathered whatever strength she had left and jumped into the fray, rapier still in hand. Her side sent a sharp pain along her body, the dressing had come loose and she started to bleed again. The stench of the trolls was nearly over- powering, like rotting flesh. It was no matter. She let out an incoherent battle cry, cutting her way through the mob and rushed to Ill’yonix and stabbed three of the trolls before they knew she was there. One of the others was skewered by a man just behind her. The last troll tried to attack the kulkulcan’s head, but Bianca got to it as well and sliced it nearly in half. Fatigue swept over her, and her side continued to scream with pain.
But the trolls had finally had enough. The few remaining showed their tails and fled back into the mountains. The full Haab moon and the waning crescent Tsolk’in moon illuminating the rout. Crossbows sang with the few remaining bolts insuring the retreat. The only other sounds were the gasping of exhausted men and kulkulcano’ob and the occasional grunt or squeal of a troll as a bolt hit home.
REVIEWS:
Vlogentia
A Tale of Second World
WM W. Somers
Amazon KDP (Oct
11, 2020)
Softcover
$14.00
(328pp)
978-1-73578-790-9
from Amazon books
5 star rating
This story grabs you right from the beginning and takes you through wonderfully thrilling situations. The kind of book that’s hard to put down. There are even dragons! Appropriate for youth readers as well. Very well written and hard to believe this is the author’s first book. I can’t wait to read more from him! I don’t normally read a book twice but I’m this case I think I will!!
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from Amazon books
4 star rating
I enjoy a well written book like this, it has an interesting story line and mind bending timelines. Well worth the time.
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Pubby Rating
4 star rating
This book isn't the type I usually read, but I enjoyed it.
by K*******************************************************
Pubby Rating
3 star rating
I don't usually like sifi, but this book was interesting. There are a lot of characters in it and a lot of plot to follow. I feel like it was fast paced, but sometimes there was too much to keep up with. Overall, it was a good read.
by JR
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Clarion Rating: 4 out of 5
Vlogentia is a exciting fantasy novel in which people from parallel worlds face each other down.
In WM W. Somers’s fantasy novel Vlogentia, people from Earth are abducted by those attempting a power grab in a parallel world.
In the sixteenth century, representatives of the Spanish Inquisition begin a siege of several Mayan villages. In the process, a priest stumbles across a floating sphere; it transports him to a parallel world that’s orbited by twin moons. The priest ushers the villages through the portal, leading to the formation of a new civilization: Vlogentia, named after one of the priest’s family names.
Vlogentia ushers in an era of relative peace in the Second World. But during one of the celebratory events honoring the new year, a girl, Bianca, is kidnapped and thrust into a royal plot to seize power. The plot involves abducting Jason, a doctor from Earth, and forcing him to concoct poisons. Jason and his wife Margaret believe they are working under legitimate contract until their host turns on them, after which they, with Bianca, race to foil the plot.
The Second World is constructed in creative ways, making use of a handful of historical seed elements in establishing its colonies and blending elements of Mayan and Spanish cultures in. But there are also fantastical creatures present, including feathered dragons, vicious unicorns, and intelligent wasps known as faeries. Most life in Second World came through the portal, but proceeded to evolve to fit the different environment, including its people and cultures. The particulars of Vlogentia’s culture are further explained in several hefty glossaries that cover all aspects of its society, alongside a detailed cast of characters.
Attention to detail is a major facet of the writing, and important plot twists are foreshadowed early and often. Action scenes also arise on occasion; they stand out from the rest of the book thanks to their precise positioning and thrilling sequences. A football-like game played during the New Year celebrations is tense and cheer-inducing as Bianca’s team overcomes beefier teams, while a showdown between a dragon and Bianca unfolds with intensity as she bests the creature using her wits and agility. But the story loses steam in its last third, and its conclusion is rushed.
Vlogentia is an exciting fantasy novel in which people from parallel worlds face each other down.
Reviewed by
John M. Murray
April 23, 2021
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KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW
In this fantasy novel, a king in an alternate universe plans to
conquer an entire realm, and he kidnaps people from our
Earth to do it.
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet crashed into Earth, resulting
in mass extinction—and the opening of a gateway to a
parallel universe. Later, in 1585, Father Sebastian Vlogentia
Garcia Lopez leads residents of his village to a small island
to
hide from Spanish inquisitors. As they explore their new hiding
place, Father Sebastian stumbles upon a glowing, floating
orb, which transports him to an entirely new world. He soon
realizes that he’s found a place that could be truly safe for
his
villagers. Years later, in the Second World’s kingdom of Vlogentia,
founded by Father Sebastian, a woman named Bianca
celebrates the new year by spending time with her boyfriend and
taking part in a sport before an audience of thousands of
spectators; then one of her teammates leads her to a group of
kidnappers. Back on our Earth, Jason Blankenship and his
wife, Margaret,are taking a trip to investigate a new job offer.
Before long, they’re abducted, as well, taken to an island in
the middle of nowhere, and sent through the portal to Vlogentia.
Now Jason is being forced to help his kidnappers create a
poison—which is just one step in the king’s plan to take over all
of the Second World. Now Bianca, Jason, and Margaret
must work together to escape their captors and foil the plot. Over
the course of this fantasy novel, Somers offers an often
engaging, if uneven, tale of two worlds coming together. The author
appears to have done his research when it comes to
aspects of Mayan and Mesoamerican culture and how they permeate the
architecture and culture of Vlogentia, which is an
impressively addition to the overall world building; he also
includes several appendices regarding these elements at the
back of the book. However, some of the dialogue leaves something to
be desired; for example, Jason’s kidnapper often
speaks like a bad movie villain, as when he advises his cohorts to
“do your destructive best.”
An entertaining, if occasionally uneven, fantasy tale about a
parallel Earth and the strange creatures therein.