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anna kashina

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: The Guild of Assassins, by Anna Kashina

Y’all may remember Anna Kashina from one of Boosting the Signal’s two inaugural posts, when I featured her book Blades of the Old Empire. Now Book 2 has been released from Angry Robot, and I promised Anna I’d get her post up this past Friday. But I’ve been swamped working on Victory of the Hawk. So here it is today instead! More regularly scheduled posts will resume once I finish getting Victory out of my brain.

In Anna’s first post you met Nimos of the Kadim Brotherhood. Now meet Kara, and what she seeks to do following the events of Book 1!

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The Guild of Assassins

The Guild of Assassins

My name is Kara. I am a Majat warrior of the Diamond rank. Very few in existence are capable of matching me in a one-on one fight, and they all are my fellows in rank. Diamonds.

My skill makes me a spearhead of the Majat force, and one of the most cherished guild members. People in the Majat fortress treat me like royalty. I can have anything I want. All in exchange for one thing—obedience. No matter what, I must obey the Code of my Guild.

I have no memory of my parents, or of any other life. The Majat Guild is my home, my family that trained me to fight, kill, and obey, ever since I was five. I’ve never had a problem with this life. Being a Diamond Majat is in my blood, and I fit my role well. Or so I’ve thought.

I am not permitted to love, even though the Majat Guild encourages us to explore our sexuality during our training. When I felt an attraction toward the man I was hired to protect—Prince Kythar Dorn—I was prepared to suppress these feelings. But when an enemy hired me by name to kidnap Prince Kythar and deliver him to his murderers, I found, for the first time in my life, that I was unable to follow my orders. Instead, I secretly escaped from my Guild and delivered Prince Kythar to his friends and protectors.

I knew the price I must pay of this. My life. I knew exactly what awaits me. A Majat assassin would be sent to execute me. He would be specially trained to target my secret weakness, known only to my trainers and the people who raised me. He would strike me down, and there would be nothing whatsoever I could do about it.

And then, the impossible happened. The man my Guild had sent after me, Mai, chose to spare my life. He had disabled me and made it seem as if I was dead. He had me in his power, but he let me live.

Now, I am the first Majat warrior in the history of my Guild free of my obligations. The Majat have no Code to cover my situation, which had been considered to be impossible before. But sooner or later my Guild will find out what happened. They will send another killer. This time, after Mai.

I owe him my life. I will not abandon him to pay for his actions that gave me my freedom. I will follow him and fight by his side till the end.

Mai is my destiny now. I will not betray him.

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Buy the Book: Angry Robot | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Random House

Follow the Author On: www.annakashina.com (official site and blog) | Facebook | Twitter

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Blades of the Old Empire followup

If you’ve been following the Boosting the Signal posts, you’ll have seen one of the first two that went up a few weeks ago: the post for Blades of the Old Empire by Anna Kashina.

Anna ran into a very unfortunate problem with her book’s release–the discovery that a critical chapter towards the end was missing!

She’s asked me to spread the word now though that her publisher, Angry Robot, has swiftly addressed the problem. Corrected print copies have shipped out to retailers, and the electronic editions deployed for sale should now also be fixed. So if you were considering checking the book out and hadn’t yet, you should be able to get the properly updated version now. (And I encourage you to go buy it directly from Angry Robot if you can, right over here, to support their delicious DRM-free goodness!)

Boosting the Signal

Boosting the Signal: Blades of the Old Empire, by Anna Kashina

Anna Kashina is a fellow former author from Drollerie Press, and I’m pleased to feature her as the second of two posts for my doubleheader Boosting the Signal premiere day! Her newly fantasy novel, Blades of the Old Empire, has just been released by Angry Robot and is her first novel with a major SF/F publisher–and here, she gives us a look at her antagonist Nimos.

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Blades of the Old Empire

Blades of the Old Empire

I am Nimos, a member of the Kaddim Brotherhood. I am gifted with mind magic, which enables me to bend people to my will, pry into their thoughts, and affect their judgment. I taught other Kaddim Brothers the basics of this magic, but no one else is as good as I am.

In the days of the old Shandorian Empire, our brotherhood rose to power and was able to place our leader, the Reincarnate, on the imperial throne. However, our timing had been unfortunate and a group of renegades was able to overthrow us, leading to the bloodshed that is now referred to as the Holy Wars. The empire fell, and our brotherhood was forced to retreat into shadows, gathering enough power to rise again.

And now, our time has come. Once again, we stand strong, and we are in a great position to restore the glory of the Old Empire out of the scattered kingdoms that formed in its place. The Kaddim are formidable warriors, wielding rare and exotic weapons–orbens–that no one is able to resist. The only warriors to match us are the Majat, but they, like everyone else in the kingdoms, are susceptible to our mind powers. Through the anti-magic laws that our brotherhood helped to put into place during the empire days, everyone with a magic gift had been carefully weeded, leaving us with virtually no opposition to our plans.

And then, a problem arose. Prince Kythar, the heir to the throne of Tallan Dar, had somehow escaped the magic control laws. His inborn gift grants him control of the elements and a unique ability to focus, rendering him immune to the Kaddim magic. Worse, as we became aware of the problem and gathered efforts to capture the prince, he was able to pass his immunity to his Diamond Majat bodyguard, Kara. As long as she is by his side, we cannot possibly defeat him.

Kythar’s magic is rare, and fortunately he has no idea yet how to use it to its full power. Time is of essence. We must take care of the prince before he figures it out. But to do that, we first must take care of his bodyguard Kara, and this is a task no Kaddim warriors are able to accomplish. Her weapon skill makes her nearly undefeatable.

Fortunately, I have a plan. If we cannot take care of Kara, all we need to do is pitch her against her Majat Guild, and they will have no problem finishing the job.

A lot of mind control work went into carrying out this plan. And now it is all in motion and nothing could probably stop us.

Mwahahahahaaaaaaa…

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Genre: Fantasy

Buy the Book: Angry Robot | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Random House

Follow the Author On: www.annakashina.com (official site and blog) | Facebook | Twitter