After the Bloodwood Staff
The sedentary and impractical Hoyle meets Sybil Alvaro in a used bookstore, and she invites him to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author in a search for the mysterious Bloodwood Staff. He’s spent his entire life reading vintage adventure action, and thinks he knows how these things should go.
In the mountains west of Sydney, his expectations are almost immediately derailed, as nobody – not Sybil, and certainly not the irrepressible Ada Drake, stand-in for the obligatory plucky urchin – behaves the way they’re supposed to.
As they gradually realise that their lighthearted adventure has put themselves and their loved ones in dire peril, Hoyle is forced to face the fact that he is woefully unsuited to be the stereotypical hero.
A deliberate subversion of adventure, fantasy and satire tropes, After the Bloodwood Staff is a brilliant and unexpected ride.
“I thoroughly enjoyed Laura E. Goodin’s After the Bloodwood Staff for its strong characters and rich imagination. The characters react with humor, irony, fear, anger, and courage, and their inner journeys evolve along with their outward quest. A well-crafted tale of adventure and mystery with a fantastical web of tangled storylines!” 5 stars
Available in print and ebook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, or your favourite bookstore or online retailer.
$24.95
Book Details
| Weight | 322 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 216 × 140 mm |
| Extent | 284 pages |
| Format | Paperback |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Release date | 10 December 2016 |
| ISBN | 9781922200723 |
| Imprint | Odyssey Books |
About The Author
Laura E. Goodin
American-born writer Laura E. Goodin decided at seven years old to be a writer. Over the decades, she’s worked as a reporter, editor, technical writer, media manager, web-content developer, writing teacher, and freelance writer, but it was only as she entered her 40s that she determined to return to her childhood dream of writing stories that would amaze and entertain. She was transmuted in the crucible of the 2007 Clarion South Workshop, and went on to gain a PhD in creative writing from the University of Western Australia. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Review of Australian Fiction, Adbusters, Wet Ink, The Lifted Brow, and Daily Science Fiction, among others, and in several anthologies. Her plays and libretti have been performed on three continents, and her poetry has been performed internationally, both as spoken word and as texts for new musical compositions. She currently teaches writing at various tertiary institutions. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, composer Houston Dunleavy, and spends what little spare time she has in trying to be as much like Xena, Warrior Princess as possible.
Saifunnissa Hassam for Readers’ Favorite –
In Laura E. Goodin’s adventure novel After the Bloodwood Staff, a fictitious novel of the same title becomes the basis of an adventure. Sybil Alvaro believes the novel After the Bloodwood Staff, written by her favorite author C. G. Ingraham, is not entirely fiction. Hoyle Marchand, who loves to read adventure stories, agrees to go with Sybil in search of the mysterious Bloodwood Staff in the mountains west of Sydney, Australia. Ada is a spunky and street-smart young woman who befriends the two Americans in Sydney and joins them in their trek into the mountains. The story’s pace, action, and tension ratchet up when it appears that someone else is also searching for the Bloodwood Staff. Why should a reddish wooden staff with a carved, leaf-like blade – that may not even exist – exert such a strong attraction?
I thoroughly enjoyed Laura E. Goodin’s After the Bloodwood Staff for its strong characters and rich imagination. I loved the way Goodin interweaves the search by Sybil and Hoyle with Ingraham’s novel, its clues, and hints of the location of the Bloodwood Staff. I loved the twisting turns in the story, the layers of past and present. I was pulled into the story as the adventure spirals into a terrifying mystery, fraught with danger. I liked the realistic way in which Sybil, Hoyle, and Ada deal with grim and perilous circumstances so unlike any other experiences in their lives. The characters react with humor, irony, fear, anger, and courage, and their inner journeys evolve along with their outward quest. A well-crafted tale of adventure and mystery with a fantastical web of tangled storylines!