Welcome to the next stop on the blog tour for Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi! Today I have a guest post from the author, as well as a giveaway. Read on!
About the Book:
Debut author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers an unforgettable fantasy adventure that powerfully explores the true meaning of justice and guilt. Packed with dark magic and thrilling action, Beasts Made of Night is a gritty Nigerian-influenced fantasy perfect for fans of Paolo Bacigalupi and Nnedi Okorafor. In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts—lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt.
Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but 17-year-old Taj is cocky and desperate to provide for his family.
When Taj is called to eat a sin of a member of the royal family, he’s suddenly thrust into the center of a dark conspiracy to destroy Kos. Now Taj must fight to save the princess that he loves—and his own life.
Goodreads * Amazon * Indiebound
Tochi Onyebuchi’s Five Favorite Fantastical Worlds
1.) “Monstress” by Marjorie Liu. Her and Sana Takeda created a version of early 1900s steampunk East Asia that is gorgeous and treacherous all at once. The visual style has this crazy art-deco fusion in the architecture with this smooth and yet sharp character design that makes it not quite a Western story but not completely a manga either. Science exists right alongside magic, so that you have scientists studying brains, and then on the next page chibi-style creatures. Also, the story of the Arcanics, powerful shape-shifting creatures that can assume human form, being made slaves for the Cumea who consume the Arcanics to gain their powers, provides all sorts of poignant metaphors for colonization and slavery and racism. I love reading about the world that Maika has to navigate as she learns to live with the monster inside of her. I probably wouldn’t last a minute, though.
2.) The “Toward Stars Era” in the anime “Outlaw Star”. For much of my childhood, I was fascinated with space. The space in “Outlaw Star” is like the underbelly. It’s a world of pirates and assassins and bounty hunters, some of them looking for the score of a lifetime and some of them just trying to survive one job at a time. I could have a lot of fun in that world.
3.) India in the year 2047 in Ian McDonald’s “River of Gods”. Every page of this book was filled to bursting with new ideas. Reading it had the effect of opening a million doors at once in my head. From removing the concept of gender for a species to artificial intelligence modeled after the Hindu pantheon to the concept of M-Star Theory and universes unlocked, I felt like a kid surrounded by new toys, whose creator I could only call a genius for having thought them up. It really did feel like anything could happen in this world, like anything was possible, even stuff I could not begin to imagine.
4.) Republic City in “The Legend of Korra”. The world of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and its subsequent series “The Legend of Korra” is so lush and fully realized. The political unrest happens in a world governed by the elements, where the spirits speak to you through the water and where fire and wind can, quite literally, be bent to one’s purposes. And pro-bending, the sport where earthbenders, waterbenders, and firebenders try to throw each other out of the ring using their bending techniques seems like all the fun in the world.
5.) The Empire of Dara in Ken Liu’s “Dandelion Dynasty” series. Airships draped in silk, a man who walks the earth like a giant, celestial gods taking the form of earthly elements. All of these and more are spectacular features of the world brought to life in “The Grace of Kings” and its sequel “The Wall of Storms,” the first two novels in Ken Liu’s silkpunk trilogy. There is so much incredible stuff here, from the wondrous way technology is used to power flight to the way that the lowliest of characters can achieve incredible feats of heroism, it seems as though every day spent in Dara gives one the opportunity to witness the birth of a legend.
Thanks so much to Tochi Onyebuchi for sharing these! Looks like I have some reading/watching to do!
About the Author:
Tochi Onyebuchi is a Nigerian American writer and a practicing attorney based in New York City. He holds a MFA in screenwriting from Tisch, a Masters degree in global economic law from L’institut d’études politiques, and a JD from Columbia Law School. His writing has appeared in Asimov’s and Ideomancer, among other places. Beasts Made of Night is his debut series. You can follow him @tochitruestory.
Giveaway:
Tour Schedule:
danielle hammelef
I’ll have to check out these favorite worlds as they are new to me. Can’t wait to read this exciting book.
Sabrina Fox
This made me want to watch Legend of Korra. I loved Republic City as well!
Jess
That is one fabulous cover!