Durham author Brendan Quayle has this month released the second book in his epic fantasy trilogy Tales of the Q’alix. Fire Mountain continues the dangerous quest of Osian and his band of warriors into unchartered territory, in the precarious company of The Shining Stone.
Evoking a Tolkien-esque world of wild tribes, mythical creatures and unearthly talismans, Dr Brendan Quayle’s Q’alix novels offer a rare form of escape from prosaic 21st century life. The Northern author’s intricate plots are full of celebration for the natural world and draw inspiration from his work as an anthropologist and environmentalist as well as his experiences of meeting shamans in the remote Himalayas.
Ten thousand years after the Great Ice, evil is on the rise. The Morok, a murderous force, has taken over Erainn, the holy land of the tribes, and enslaved its keepers. In part one of the trilogy, The Shining Stone, Osian, a young hunter searching for his lost family, finds a curious ancient object with a deadly secret. Now, joining a band of renegades led by the mysterious shaman Tiroc Og he journeys to Fire Mountain, the lair of the Morok leader, there to seek his family and free the slaves.
Facing betrayal from within, an impossible wolf-ridden terrain and a desperate enemy now hunting them down, the renegades must rely more than ever on the curious powers of the Shining Stone, at the risk of losing not just their lives – but their souls.
Meanwhile, Osian has fallen for Gimin, a beautiful warrior of the Fox-Wolf tribe. But she, like so many others and so much else on this journey, may not be what she seems…
Brendan said:
“This is an adventure story which can be read on many levels, from ages 9 to 99, but it’s also a puzzle and environmental parable which invites deeper probe. The events of the trilogy take place in a distant eon following a future Ice Age. Humanity has survived by re-evolving within nature, re-acquiring ancient animal instincts and modes of thought. People live in tribes, honoring their totemic ancestors, creator spirits and animal brothers, inspired by artifacts and relics from a long extinct civilization they know only as the Manu.
“The trilogy tells of the struggle of the free tribes of the sub-continent of Greater Manau against a predatory and vengeful invading force. There are sharp echoes of current global crises, where control, dogma, and the grasping for natural resources outweighs the real war – against climate change and the threat of human extinction”.
Dr Brendan Quayle is an award-winning environmental writer and filmmaker. He is the author (with David Bellamy) of the best-selling England’s Last Wilderness and the seminal Turning the Tide. Scots Irish of Manx ancestry, he lives with his family by a wild wood in the North of England. Trained originally as an anthropologist, he studied amongst shamans and real-life sorcerers in the mountain tribes of the High Himalaya. His extraordinary experiences there, together with his lifelong interest in the myth and folklore of his Celtic ancestors, provide the inspiration and much of the source material for The Shining Stone.
FIRE MOUNTAIN will be available in paperback from 16 April 2025 (£11.99) and is currently available in ebook (£3.99) at all good bookshops and online booksellers.
Find out more at www.brendanquayle.com
