Cirrus@Austlit

'In the year 2156 the skellig, a shapeshifter named Gamble, is off her tits on moonshine in a bar in Dodge. Thought to be a hybrid of insect and woman, an escapee from the bad batch back in the 30s, she is bagged and boxed by bounty hunters; sold to a laboratory funded offshore by the current Chinese empire. She is to be euthanized but she hits luck. The young scientist set the task of the killing has a secret. He has been inducted into a band of bandits intent on protecting and liberating runaways. Dystopia. Misrule. Pirates, badlands, crossbreeds, cowboys and a big Maori women in charge of a whole town of warriors, the story the skellig tells is one of hope and redemption where hard tech and stainless steel meet legend and myth. Incorporating themes from the Underground Railroad transporting slaves to freedom, wormholes in a bar called the Midnight Express and a raft of characters of true depth, courage and sexiness this is a story where the enemy has no face. Corporate blindness to any kind of suffering and could be called greed. Only a well-orchestrated but desperate run by all concerned—shamans, shapeshifters, runaways, freed hybrids, humans, mutants and transdroids—can offer any chance of liberty. Guided by the starman, the skellig named Gamble, Mukata, Terrence, Bull, Rattlesnake Lil, and Alice in his armored, all-terrain vehicle, flying his rainbow flag on a fifteen foot high middle-finger to the drone swarms overhead, several thousand individuals run, fly or ride in desperation, followed by a militarized force intent on destruction. Across the river that borders two worlds to the unknown lands of ice and snow, a place of legend may or may not exist and guarded by a mythic race known as the Álfur. It’s live free or die trying.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Initiation is a memoir that reflects on the moral and ideological changes of the last sixty years. Written in a perennial voice de Angeles, witch, scholar and feminist, rewilds her own story and transforms cultural stereotypes into the language of myth. “Witch people, like magicians and sorcerers, conjurers, druids and hoodoo hexers, like cunning women and cunning men, kadaicha, shaman, manitou, angakok, curandera, bruxa, enchanters and shapechangers are needed in this world. They are the stories not bound by dogma or displayed as relics in a museum. They cause disquiet. They summon questions but it’s not their way to give answers. They take us to the wild and the frightening places. The cave entrance under the ice at the base of that crevasse. Blue handprints on the rock face imprinted with an ochre of confusion. By people we cannot name and from a time we cannot confirm. Once Upon a Time people. People of the reindeer. Volcano people.” Born in 1951 and put up for adoption, de Angeles was sold by the church for £300. She was always going to be a problem.' (Publication summary)

'Among us walk a race older than time-called the Travelers, Tuatha d Dannan, the Sidhe, the Fair Folk, and the Faidh, they are the magical beings who remember when forests covered much of the earth and people revered the older gods and goddesses.

'The Shining Isle is the story of Holly Tremenhere and the small island of Inishrún. Holly was awakened to the mysteries at a young age, but could not cope with their seemingly alien reality and turned away from them. Now, disillusioned with the senselessness of day-to-day existence, she is ripe for change. Meanwhile, Inishrún has been targeted for takeover by those who do not understand its significance. The isle and its inhabitants harbor an ancient secret-one they will fight to the death to keep safe.

'It is a book, ultimately, about the right of indigenous people to self-determination and has - as an addendum - the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, as yet unratified.' (Author's website, http://www.lydeangeles.com/books.html