An aspiring techno-nun searches for a way to get back in with the church that exiled her by scavenging antiquities in dystopic future Orange County.
Beautiful descriptions of grief and change, and E. S. Dahl's prose is clear and distinctive in the sample chapters. The Lion and the Dead is worth your time. Take a look!
In the wake of her father’s death, Evie finds herself living with the ghost of her home’s original owner, Capt. Benjamin James, who died in the Civil War.
Evie had heard “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” about as often as she’d heard her own name in the two and half decades she’d been alive. She hated the phrase, not because it felt like an empty platitude, but because it was true. That horrid earned-strength, she felt, had twisted and malformed her, stripping her body of supple fragility and replaced it with knotted muscle that felt too bulky for her form. It rested like chainmail over her skeleton, protective, but heavy. Iron had grown up like a weed around her spine, fusing her vertebrae together, allowing her to stand tall through any storm, but leaving her unable to relax into a peaceful moment or form into another’s arms.
Evie had heard “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” about as often as she’d heard her own name in the two and half decades she’d been alive. She hated the phrase, not because it felt like an empty platitude, but because it was true. That horrid earned-strength, she felt, had twisted and malformed her, stripping her body of supple fragility and replaced it with knotted muscle that felt too bulky for her form. It rested like chainmail over her skeleton, protective, but heavy. Iron had grown up like a weed around her spine, fusing her vertebrae together, allowing her to stand tall through any storm, but leaving her unable to relax into a peaceful moment or form into another’s arms.
I love how matter-of-fact this is. The plot thickens!
It was almost time. It wasn’t as though this was Walt’s first time doing this, but it never got easier.
Certainly never called handsome with any sincerity, Walt nonetheless had a face people liked: it was doughy and kind, given character by the waves of wrinkles across his forehead.
Life pulled at him in his grave. The pinching started in his toes, more of an irritation at first than some posthumous call back to nature, but the tingling and towing sensation crept up his toes into his ankles— searing deeply into his calves, bleeding up his thighs— shifting his hips to a more comfortable position in his rather shallow grave. It seeped through him, growing in strength as it filled his lungs, puffing them up until his ribcage strained against the rusty-damp ground bearing down upon him. His mind flickered on, humming at a disjointed click like a fever dream, but he was, mercifully, not yet conscious.
Life pulled at him in his grave. The pinching started in his toes, more of an irritation at first than some posthumous call back to nature, but the tingling and towing sensation crept up his toes into his ankles— searing deeply into his calves, bleeding up his thighs— shifting his hips to a more comfortable position in his rather shallow grave. It seeped through him, growing in strength as it filled his lungs, puffing them up until his ribcage strained against the rusty-damp ground bearing down upon him. His mind flickered on, humming at a disjointed click like a fever dream, but he was, mercifully, not yet conscious.
