Blog tour: Herald

Lee Hunt has a new fantasy audiobook out in his Dynamicist Trilogy: Herald. And there's a Giveaway!

Robert thought becoming a dynamicist would enable him to change the world, starting with saving all his friends from being slaughtered. He was wrong.

Acts of genuine creativity used to bring mortal punishment. But now, wizardry is dead and Robert, Koria and Eloise live in a world where change and invention is possible.

Robert hopes that mathematically-framed dynamics will enable him to change the new world. But he keeps having prophetic dreams where his friends are all murdered by a mysterious cloaked man, and the grain protestors are more menacing than ever. They declare dynamics is dangerous and that the changes must stop. They are right about one thing: dynamics is dangerous, especially for someone so hopeful, angry and impetuous as Robert.

Soon Robert's horrific nightmares come true and a cloaked man appears on campus, stalking and murdering students --his friends are next.

Desperate to change the future, Robert recklessly pushes the bounds of both dynamics and reason. Every crushing failure dampens Robert's hope for the future and pushes him a step closer to the powerful, nihilistic, and merciless Lonely Wizard.

Series Blurb:

Would it kill you to create something genuinely new? In Robert's world, it used to. Supernatural vengeance for invention is now a thing of the past.

Young, optimistic, quick of mind and quick to act, Robert thinks being invited to the New School is an invitation to change the world. But change is difficult when there is no history of innovation.

He is initially successful in his studies, but nothing is as simple as he naively imagines. His classmates confuse and frustrate him. One is a drunk, while another two constantly stalk him. Is it for love or something more sinister?

Robert's optimism is further tested by protestors who circle the campus, decrying the newly invented breed of grain. They claim it is poison and that the New School should be punished by Nimrheal, the god who formerly murdered inventors. Robert suspects foreign business influences are behind the protests, but he quickly finds that investigating their cause is dangerous.

Robert's most difficult challenges are his unresolved childhood issues. His mother died while he was a child. Robert's formative helplessness and inability to remember her face projects into a powerful and blinding protectiveness towards all women. When a campus assault pushes Robert over the edge, his hopes of even staying at the New School are jeopardized. He cannot aspire to change the world if he does not even know himself.

At the same time as Robert struggles on campus, a powerful, ruthless and emotionally closed man known only as the Lonely Wizard journeys across an empty wilderness to return home. As Robert and the Lonely Wizard move closer together, Robert finds that instead of entering a golden era of invention, he may instead be on the brink of a cold war and an endless, unchanging dark age.

Buy Links

Dynamicist (Book 1)

Amazon Audiobook | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN | B&N | Kobo | Liminal Fiction

Herald (Book 2)

Amazon Audiobook | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN | B&N | Kobo | Liminal Fiction

Knight in Retrograde (Book 3)

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN | B&N | Kobo | Liminal Fiction

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Giveaway

Lee is giving away a gift card with this tour:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47187/?

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Excerpt

WHEEEEeeeeeeee! WHEEEEeeeeeeee!

Davyn’s whistle tore the air again, but someone lunged at him and the big man stumbled and swallowed the thing. He staggered back, choking.

Whesplurgh!

“He is liar!” roared one of the bald, stocky men in his thick accent, pointing at Endicott. “We’ll beat the truth out of him!” He stepped forward and began drawing his sword.

Cyara rallied from her shock. “No one beats anyone here!”

His bald, stocky companion pushed Cyara roughly, and she stumbled backwards into the crowd. This was too much for Endicott. His heart leapt, and without thinking, he grabbed the heavy iron bacon pan and swung it, bacon-outwards, at the thug who had struck Cyara.

Gong! Glahhr!

Bacon, grease, and pan connected ferociously, and as a unit, with the man’s rotund head, knocking him heels over cartwheeling head to the ground. His sword clattered to the floor. The other bald man came on, lunging with his sword. Endicott turned the blade aside with the pan and tried to step back, but he stumbled over Purple Hat, who was arguing with someone else behind him. The swordsman saw his opportunity and rushed forward, sword raised for an overhead strike, but stopped short with a puzzled look on his fat face. Something had caught hold of his foot. It was Cyara. She had him by the ankle in a surprisingly strong grip.

Gong! Glahhr!

Endicott struck him in the face with the pan before the swordsman could kick Cyara loose. As his attacker fell back, Endicott looked for Cyara, but she was hidden by a shift in the crowd. Then he saw Davyn. His big friend was surrounded by a group of people who were trying to help him cough out the whistle. Endicott almost laughed and was about to return to the two bald protestors when he was savagely struck on the temple by a blow he did not see.

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Author Bio

After having the Last Rights read to him at the age of twenty-five, Lee Hunt came to appreciate the

power of catharsis. He was born on a farm with only one working lung but has gone on to become an Ironman triathlete, sport rock climber, professional geophysicist, and writer.

As a scientist, Lee has published close to fifty papers, articles, or expanded abstracts, has been awarded numerous technical awards, and was even sent on a national speaking tour. He enjoys discussing the amorality of science and is useful at parties in explaining the physics of whether fracture stimulation might be a risk to the fuzzy, cuddly things of nature. After 28 years trying to understand the earth as a geophysicist, Lee turned to writing fiction. He now spends time hiking, cycling, floundering in a lake, clinging desperately to a wall, or at his desk trying to write an entertaining story.

Author Website: https://www.leehunt.org/

Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100052376555360

Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/DynamicistAuthor

Author Liminal Fiction (LimFic.com): https://www.limfic.com/mbm-book-author/lee-hunt/

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B082YFTMCK

Your Truth and My Narrative
Q. In the Dynamicist Trilogy, The Lonely Wizard says, “Most people shy away from the world of the quantitative and prefer instead to sully events with narratives, coloring the real facts with interpretation and the prejudicial labels of a secretly flexible ethic.” Your books seem concerned with ideas of truth, objectivity, and narrative. Why?
A. I don’t have just one answer to that, but you’re right, both objective and subjective notions of truth are particularly important in Dynamicist and Herald. These notions are critical from the perspective of plot, theme and character.
Q. Ok. We need to address these story elements, but first can you break down what you mean by objective and subjective truth?
A. Objective truth is the idea that the facts of the world are measurable and independent of the subject (us). This idea ties into the scientific method, reason, mathematics, physics, and other sciences. Math and science, and facts, are the same for everyone. Subjective truth, on the contrary, is related to the post-modern idea that the truth depends on circumstances and culture, not universal reality.
Q. Give us an example of objective truth.
A. Two plus two equals four. Bodies at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by a force. A person is dead.
Q. And subjective truth?
A. When she said she was pressured by the CEO, she was speaking her truth. Facts don’t matter, how I feel matters. Life is beautiful.
Q. Do you offer a verdict on these ideas of truth?
A. I don’t tell the reader what to think.
Q. Just for fun, give us a criticism of subjective truth.
A. Sure. While I accept that everyone’s experience is different, and that meaning may vary, speaking of “my truth” or “her truth” may trivialize facts, and can make many situations unworkable. Moreover, the term “my truth” can be used to gaslight the speaker as easily as it empowers them. It can suggest that nothing really happened. But of course, things do happen.
Q. And a criticism of objective truth?
A. If we suggest that people’s feelings and circumstances don’t—or never will—matter, we have a problem.
Q. How does this conflict over the meaning of truth play out in the plot of Herald?
A. There are arguments over quite a few facts, such as: is the grain poison? is change good or evil? are wizards dangerous? is the New School and its inventions good or bad?
Q. Do you directly answer these questions?
A. I try to entertain, surprise, and give the reader some things to think about.
Q. But you don’t tell the reader what to think.
A. Right.
Q. What about the protestors? They seem irrational. Are they?
A. Robert tries to find that out.
Q. Does he?
A. All I will say is that he finds out it is complicated.
Q. What is the thematic connection to truth in Herald?
A. Robert and his classmates hope to change the world. It is suggested early on that to do so, they need to understand it.
Q. So … they need facts and causal relationships.
A. And they need to consider that different people will react to change differently.
Q. Right. You also have a legendary figure called Nimrheal that punished invention in the past.
A. Yes, by horrifically murdering the inventor. This history affects people’s feelings on change.
Q. I bet. How about the character angle behind truth?
A. The Lonely Wizard, and to a lesser extent Robert, are caught up in what things mean and how to feel about it.
Q. The Lonely Wizard says some shocking things, such as, “Of all there was or would be, the calculable was my favorite. I reveled in the clarity of the unequivocal, whatever it might reveal, no matter how far it might take me.” That seems threatening. And later he says, “When most people kill another person, they feel guilt or sadness. I do not. For my hand in all those deaths, I feel no remorse. Why should I? It is what I chose to do.” Is the Lonely Wizard a monster or is he instead a uniquely rational and objective person?
A. The readers will have to decide that. It is possible to be correct about some things, such as the value of objective facts, and still be wrong about others. The Lonely Wizard does admit that subjective feelings exist. He also says, “[Feelings] are the inscrutable translation of the objective through the unknowable human mind. What I had done was inarguably measurable, but what it meant was uniquely different for each of us left alive.”
Q. The name, the Lonely Wizard feels like a warning. He come across as the most powerful individual in the trilogy. What is his weakness?
A. He struggles with his emotions. He says, “I thought that what kept me from them, from her, was an inability to articulate my feelings and an intellectual honesty, a stubborn integrity, that doubted love was possible and therefore could not speak a thing that might be a lie.”
Q. Oh dear. No wonder he is lonely. What is the difference between the Lonely Wizard and Robert, at least early in the trilogy?
A. Robert believes in love.