I'm excited to share with you an extract from Melvin Burgess' Bloodtide and Bloodsong duology as part of the Kaleidoscopic Tour's blog tour. The tour celebrates the rerelease of these two novels in a one beautiful jacket! Enjoy and do check out the other posts within the tour!!
Extract
"Now the hall was frozen. Men who wanted to rush forward and seize the intruder found their
muscles stilled. Those who wished to run from the hall for fear of the dead man found
themselves rooted to their seats. There was only the soft sound of his feet on the floor. He
paused for a moment and looked around the hall as if he recognised every single face there.
Then, he reached to his belt and took a knife, which he held up in the air above his head. It
was an old, crude, ugly thing, with a stubby, crinkled blade. Those close enough could see
that it wasn’t even made of metal. It was stone, chipped stone – something a caveman might
have used fifty thousand years before.
The dead man turned to the lift shaft and with a sudden stab, he plunged the blade into the
lift shaft. A sound like a tuning fork rang out, and the knife hung in the polished glass as if in
air. The dead man turned and smiled, proud and grim, down at the captive audience, who
stared transfixed at this second miracle of the day. Nothing could cut that stuff. A hundred-
tonne girder swung through space couldn’t even dent it. But here it was, pierced by a
chipped stone knife.
Only the halfman seemed to have the power of movement. He took a few steps forward from
his place behind Conor’s chair, fell face first to the ground, and they heard for the first time
his voice, half dog, half man.
‘Lord,’ said the halfman.
The dead man bent and laid a hand briefly on the dogman’s shoulder, then pushed his way
in between the bodyguards until he came to stand behind Signy’s chair. She sat twisted
round staring up at him. Val, too, twisted round in his chair, panting, to look at this guest, who
had taken every scrap of power from him just by being there. Only Conor couldn’t look at
him, but turned to glare at the bodyguards as if it was their fault that the dead man was
within striking distance of him.
The dead man leaned forward. Conor cringed, like he was waiting for a cuff round the ear.
But it never came. Instead, the man lifted Val’s cup from the table and held it high in the air.
He raised his cup to all sides of the hall, and drank a silent toast. Then he put the cup down
with a thud and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He turned and waved a hand at
the knife in the lift shaft."
Author Information
Melvin Burgess was born in London and brought up in Surrey
and Sussex. He has had a variety of jobs before becoming a full-
time writer. Before his first novel, he had short stories published
and a play broadcast on Radio 4. He is now regarded as one of
the best writers in contemporary children's literature, having won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for his acclaimed novel Junk.
London is in ruins. The once-glorious city is now a gated wasteland cut off from the rest of the country and in the hands of two warring families – the Volsons and the Conors.
In Bloodtide, Val Volson offers the hand of his young daughter, Signy, to Conor as a truce. At first the marriage seems to have been blessed by the gods, but betrayal and deceit are never far away in this violent world, and the lives of both families are soon to be changed for ever...
A generation later, in Bloodsong, fifteen-year-old Sigurd, son of King Sigmund, is the last surviving member of the Volson clan. His father’s kingdom – the former city of London – is gone. Armed with a legendary weapon, Sigurd faces death, fire and torment as he travels through Hel and back to unite his country once again.
Comments