The Shape of Stars Unknown (The Aldarfall Saga, #1) by Sybil Le Pyrmont and Meet the Author #Books #Fantasy

I love the tone of this book! And I did answered YES to all the question in the synopsis, so this is really for me. I need something spunky. Plus, what a title.

The Shape of Stars Unknown (The Aldarfall Saga, #1) by Sybil Le Pyrmont released in October in the Adult, Urban Fantasy genre.

World domination is the least of their problems.
A STRANDED DEMIGOD. Lau of the House of Feofar, troubled and headstrong, screwed up. Royally. Now he lives out his days in exile on Earth – the very planet he once tried to exterminate.

A RUDDERLESS MORTAL WOMAN. Silver Laing leads the ordinary life of a white-collar worker. Lonely and desperately in search of purpose and new horizons, she gets more than she bargained for when she is offered a mysterious job.

A CATACLYSMIC PLAN BILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE MAKING. When a deadly visitor from Lau’s shrouded past threatens to lay the world in ashes, Silver and Lau must form an unlikely alliance against ancient and far superior forces.

An alliance with the potential to shake the very foundation of the Universe.

Shimmering new worlds?
Sizzling tension?
Secrets as old as time?
Splashes of humour?

If your answer to all of the above is ‘Hell, yeah!’ then The Shape of Stars Unknown is your guy. This first book in Sybil Le Pyrmont’s new urban fantasy adventure series, The Aldarfall Saga, will take you from Germany to Tibet, from Japan to Iceland and all the way to the other end of the Universe.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55754908-the-shape-of-stars-unknown

AUTHOR BIO:Sybil Le Pyrmont was born in Germany and was raised on the Canary Islands (that Gallic name is a pseudonym – her actual name has as much flair as a tax return). Although she now resides in Frankfurt, Germany, her heart has been beating for Tokyo ever since she spent a year in that city and discovered her epic love for all things Japan. That includes, to her acute embarrassment, the Shinagawa train station jingle she has installed as her ringtone. When Sybil isn’t writing, or dreaming of the anonymous donor who will some day gift her a house in Japan, she splits her time between her airline day job and long rants about the sunshine and the always-too-hot weather.

Sybil writes urban fantasy adventure to whisk her readers away to realms of imagination that have a distinct possibility of existing somewhere in the depths of the Universe.

Visit spyrmont.com for more on Sybil and her writing.

The Saga of Aldarfall, and how my love for Japan and its culture find place in my story

by Sybil Le Pyrmont

The Saga.
The Aldarfall Saga begins when we meet Silver, a disillusioned woman living a stale, uneventful life. A chance encounter throws her into a world of secret organisations and Auctors, a godlike alien race that created and runs the Universe. She comes face to face with Lau, a demoted Auctor who has been banished to Earth and clandestinely ruled the planet for the past 5,000 years. When the world is threatened by a deadly enemy from Lau’s shrouded past, they must form an unlikely – and uneasy – alliance to protect Earth. And themselves.
So much for the events of The Shape of Stars Unknown, the first instalment in the saga; however, Lau and Silver, as they will discover along their way, are only the latest pawns in a scheme that has been concocted billions of years earlier and that could ultimately mean the end of the Universe as we know it.
More than anything, The Aldarfall Saga is a tale of journeys, personal as much as physical. My many relocations over the course of my life may be at fault here, but I believe that once we stop travelling, in the metaphorical and literal sense, we stop living. Okay, enough with the psychobabble – back to the book(s), shall we?
The Aldarfall Saga takes the reader from the safe familiarity of everyday life to the titillating fringes of unknown realms and, in the sequels to The Shape of Stars Unknown, unveils an immense Universe full of fantastic and fantastical worlds. It is an intricate story about the power of friendship and loyalty, the meaning – and pitfalls – of family, the many variations and mutations of love, the imperfections of life and why it is worth living even when it seems to have reached a cul-de-sac. Some secrets will be uncovered, others remain buried. Some problems will be resolved, others won’t. Heroes will do unheroic deeds, villains … well, villains have their own way of looking at things. Such is life, right?
Most importantly, though – The Aldarfall Saga is a fun escape that allows for a few hours’ sabbatical from the madness of the world we live in!
I am working on the rewrites for the sequel to The Shape of Stars Unknown as we speak; they will take some time, since The Aldarfall Saga was originally one manuscript of about 1,300 pages. After the initial round of revisions, I decided to break it into three books because let’s face it – no one wants to read a debut novel longer than War and Peace. Now that TSOSU is published, I am utterly enjoying my deep dive into books II and III, planning out all the required changes, additions and cuts. TSOSU is a bold, exhilarating adventure, to which its sequels will add the thrill of entirely new worlds for the reader to discover.
On Japan.
I have a love affair. I’ve had it for the past 28 years, and it outlasted every relationship, marriage, challenge and tragedy in my life. The name of said affair is “Japan”.
I first set foot in Japan in March of 1993. It sure as hell wasn’t love at first sight. I was struggling with being away from home for a whole year, anxious like a rabbit and having a hard time adjusting. Three months into my stay, things began to improve; bit by bit, I started to explore my temporary home, and day by day, I fell a little more in love. When I returned to Germany after a year, I spent the entire trip in tears. They say that slow-burn romances are often the most intense ones, and my love affair with Japan is no different. I feel like I breathe easier whenever I arrive in the country, I am more at peace with myself … even my skin feels better. I would move there in a heartbeat if I could. So it is, I guess, only natural that my spirit animal features heavily in my first novel, The Shape of Stars Unknown.
What draws both of TSOSU’s protagonists, Silver and Lau, to Japan is more than just sushi, sake and sumo. Lau is a warrior at heart, a demigod with a mental and physical grit that is reflected in the Japanese people’s gaman, the ability to endure whatever life throws at them with dignity and patience. He chooses Japan as his home on Earth because of this particular spirit. Silver shares his love for the country after spending a year there in her youth (how on earth did I come up with that idea? J); both of them have a profound appreciation for the simple elegance of Japanese art, cuisine and style, although they are not above enjoying the more turbulent aspects of life in Tokyo. Detailing those aspects would go beyond the constraints of this guest post, but believe me when I say that Tokyo is the most exciting city I’ve ever had the privilege to visit (sorry, NYC).
Japan was the natural choice for a major setting in TSOSU not only because of my personal partiality for the country. During his 5000-year exile on Earth, Lau has worked behind the scenes to advance the planet. He believes in Darwinism, the survival of the fittest and a blend of tradition and progress. The Japanese unite all of these qualities; hence, they are the one people that most closely resembles Lau’s idea of a cultured and resilient mortal race. This mentality is one reason behind his banishment from his home world and his subsequent presence on Earth.