QUARTER MOON
Three periods in history thrown together. An Anglo-Saxon woman fights to rule Cumberland. An Enlightenment publisher struggles to save his business, and a Far Future city is about to fall from the sky.
“Until we speak with the others you should learn to outwit your enemies. Give me a sword and we can hack off a head now and then, but we cannot fight an army alone. What of the chatterers in the coffee shops? The intellectuals in the city?”
“What of them?”
“Perhaps they shall teach you how to speak and win the argument.”
The novel takes place during the third ‘Quarter Moon event,’ the first two occuring in 970 and 986 AD.
After the end of the first event, shared technology caused the deaths of thousands of Saxons and Danes. During the second event, a series of protocols were introduced to prevent the mixing of people from different eras and a repeat of the earlier catastrophe.
Following the death of her husband Leofric, Ealdorman of Cumberland, Beatrische knows help will not come from the 19th or 26th centuries, unless she can contact a mythical future community her daughter insists is real.
1803 and spectators are banned from gathering to watch battles between Saxons and Danes. For Glasgow publisher Edward Creasey the ban cuts off a lucrative source of income forcing him to look for alternative investment schemes and publishing opportunities.
“Edward,” Sommerby put on his gloves and brushed his hat, “Trevithick’s steam engine broke down. That thing rattling down the streets was as dangerous as any mob of marauding Danes and Saxons.”
So much order, so much beauty, so well constructed and cared for, so clean, so free of the soaking mud and insistent rain.
And empty. Not a soul in sight. Lifeless, like the machine that had shown concern for her and brought her to safety and repair.
“You’re no from round here, lassie?”
“I am from Leipzig.”
“Is that near Argyll?”
“Saxony.”
“What? You’re a Saxon?” He stopped the carriage.
“No, I am not a Saxon, I am from Leipzig-“
“You just said you’re from Saxony. Does that not make you a Saxon? Will you get out the carriage please.”
Suspended for masquerading as a 19th century student, Ruta Elmeer, a security operative from the Cambridge Fields experimental facility, divides her time between searching for antecedents of the mythical ‘Last Man Alive’ and contributing to research into ending the Quarter Moon phenomenon.
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