A series of novels by Drew P.
Book One
Apocryphal Anthros: Reliquary
Rain Ström is the smallest applicant at the Shader University Mana Trials, and the most dangerous.
A hundred copies, signed by Drew and numbered by hand. Adult fantasy, and the first of five. Book two is already written.
Or read and listen to the first six chapters free, read aloud by Drew, in the app. What's in it
- Book one Reliquary Limited first edition About 141,000 words. A prologue and thirty-two chapters.
- Book two Disclosure Final sketches About 187,000 words. A prologue and fifty-two chapters. Read aloud with the author, end to end.
- Book three Book three Underway
- Book four Book four Outlined
- Book five Book five Outlined
The app · ThroMedia
The newest preview of the book and the audiobook lands here first.
The Apocryphal Anthros app holds the first six chapters of Reliquary, free and whole, three ways at once:
- Read it. The text, exactly as Drew wrote it, set for your screen.
- Hear it. Drew reads it to you, and the paragraph he is reading lights up as he goes, so you can read along or put the phone down and listen.
- Turn the pages. The book as it was printed, page by page.
Stop reading and start listening, and it picks up where you left off. No account, no ads, nothing to buy. When more of the book is ready, the app is where it shows up.
The jacket
Three centuries ago, humanity engineered the Anthros to serve them. Three centuries ago, humanity unmade itself with a sterilization plague, a cascade of electromagnetic storms, and a creature called the Velop.
Now, Rain Ström is the smallest applicant at the Shader University Mana Trials, and the most dangerous.
He is fifteen years old in a body that has not aged a day since he was nine, ever since the accident that killed his parents and left a cascade of white fur down the right side of his face. His silver collar suppresses his Mana the same way every other Extreme Hazard Anthro's does, but his abilities are unlike anyone else's, and he is keeping the worst of them secret. Not only can he teleport, he can heal himself rapidly.
For years Rain has wanted to go to Shader University and join the Shadernauts, the order sworn to protect Anthros from the Velops, writhing tendriled wolf creatures. It's also the place his adoptive guardian, the white-furred Dr. Noir, has just been installed as Dean of Medicine, in a position that was mysteriously vacated.
In his first weeks at Shader University, Rain will meet a deer-girl who can see his soul, a wolf-prodigy who can talk to magic itself, and a popular bully whose family name is the most powerful one in the city. He will also be hunted: by a federal agent who wants him in a cell, by a creature that should not exist, and by the thing his guardian has been hiding from him for years.
The first book of a planned series.
“For no reason at all, and for every reason in the world, Rain cried himself to sleep.”
Provenance
Written and drawn by the same person.
The text is written by a person. Every image printed inside the book is drawn by that same person, in pencil, by hand. There is no third party and no model in either job.
The cover is his as well, his lettering and his drawing of the collar. Where a drawing doesn't exist yet, the page is left blank rather than filled with something else. If you'd like to see the record behind any of this, ask, and we'll show it to you.
Who it's for
Grown-ups who never stopped reading fantasy.
It was written for adults who read fantasy, and for anyone who liked a school story once and would like one with more riding on it. There is a small hero who is outmatched by nearly everyone he meets, a handful of friends who turn out to matter more than he expected, a magic system with something underneath it, and a villain that is not so much a monster as a bureaucracy, patient and well organized and keeping very good records.
It is not a children's book, even though the hero looks like a child. The people in it get hurt, and the book doesn't pretend otherwise.
Books it would sit near on a shelf: Mort(e), The Goblin Emperor, Never Let Me Go, The Laundry Files, Beastars, Watership Down.
The list
Get one email when it's out everywhere.
The signed first edition is a hundred copies. We'll send one email when the book is out everywhere else. That's all.
Early readers
Read it before it's out.
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