New excerpt and cover reveal show off the world of ROYAL BASTARDS!
Andrew Shvarts‘ debut novel Royal Bastards has found itself on loads of anticipated Young Adult book lists for 2017, but that’s doesn’t come as a surprise to us. The story features fantasy, murder plots, betrayal, and the rebellious young royalty, so we are so down for this one!
The novel follows Tilla, the bastard daughter of a lord who discovers her father’s plot to murder a visiting princess, Lyriana, and stage a coup for power. When Tilla, her half-brother Jax, and Lyriana team up with Tilla’s fellow bastards to dig into the treachery, their own lives are quickly threatened.
Entertainment Weekly made things even more intriguing today with the release of the book’s cover image and first chapter. Take a peek!
Princess Lyriana came to Castle Waverly two months after I turned sixteen. That meant fall was setting in: the trees were red, the roads were muddy, and when Jax and I sat in the abandoned sentry tower on the eastern wall, passing a skin of wine back and forth, we could just barely see our breath in the air as we talked.
“Well, Tilla? Any sign of them?” Jax asked. He was slumped on the ancient stone of the tower’s floor, his back resting against the waist–high wall, while I sat just above him on the edge of the parapet, my bare feet dangling over a hundred–foot drop. It was midafternoon, but the sun was hid– den behind a gray blanket of clouds.
I squinted out at the gap in the sea of treetops where the road emerged from the redwood forest. The feast began in just a few hours, and we’d already seen most of the guests arrive: the Lords of all the minor Houses, riding proud amid their hoisted sigils, and the chieftains of the Zitochi clans, clad in cavebear furs, looking massive on their shaggy, horned horses. There was still no sign of the guests of honor, though, the Princess and her uncle. That seemed right. When you’re that important, you make everyone else wait for you. “Just a few more minutes. I promise it’ll be worth it.”
“Uh-huh,” Jax said. “Pass the wine.”
READ THE FULL EXCERPT ON EW
Royal Bastards hits shelves on June 6, 2017 and is available for pre-order now via Amazon. Check out the official synopsis below.
Being a bastard blows. Tilla would know. Her father, Lord Kent of the Western Province, loved her as a child, but cast her aside as soon as he had trueborn children. At sixteen, Tilla spends her days exploring long-forgotten tunnels beneath the castle with her stablehand half brother, Jax, and her nights drinking with the servants, passing out on Jax’s floor while her castle bedroom collects dust. Tilla secretly longs to sit by her father’s side, resplendent in a sparkling gown, enjoying feasts with the rest of the family. Instead, she sits with the other bastards, like Miles of House Hampstedt, an awkward scholar who’s been in love with Tilla since they were children.
Then, at a feast honoring the visiting princess Lyriana, the royal shocks everyone by choosing to sit at the Bastards’ Table. Before she knows it, Tilla is leading the sheltered princess on a late-night escapade. Along with Jax, Miles, and fellow bastard Zell, a Zitochi warrior from the north, they stumble upon a crime they were never meant to witness.
Rebellion is brewing in the west, and a brutal coup leaves Lyriana’s uncle, the Royal Archmagus, dead—with Lyriana next on the list. The group flees for their lives, relentlessly pursued by murderous mercenaries; their own parents have put a price on their heads to prevent the king and his powerful Royal Mages from discovering their treachery.
The bastards band together, realizing they alone have the power to prevent a civil war that will tear their kingdom apart—if they can warn the king in time. And if they can survive the journey . . .