FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Robert Hall
R_Hall@MicronPress.com
Into the Dark, Book III of The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy by Award-Winning Author John Royce Releases December 3rd
LOST IN HISTORY: Equestrian heroine gallops home
BOSTON, MA – Nov 27, 2011 | Saddle up for another gallop across history! The paperback edition of Into the Dark, the third and newest installment in award-winning author John Allen Royce’s Legend of the Great Horse trilogy will be released December 3 through Micron Press.
The 280-page book continues the epic equestrian adventures of 17 year-old Meagan Roberts, warned by a mysterious elderly eccentric, named Mrs. Bridgestone, that her beloved filly, Promise, was a legendary Great Horse come to “wing its rider into the dark.” The young equestrienne and her horse find themselves catapulted back through history, relying on little more than Meagan’s intrepid horsemanship to help them survive, as they “jump” ever closer towards home and their own time.
Royce’s first two installments in the trilogy, Eclipsed by Shadow and The Golden Spark, chronicle – with historic and equestrian accuracy – encounters with 20,000 B.C. horse-hunters, 100 A.D. Roman chariot racing, 13th century Mongolian hordes, knights, conquistadors, and courts of the Renaissance. Into the Dark opens with Meagan, separated from Promise, leaving 18th century England just as she learns the secret to finding the filly and awakening in 1860s Texas, where she must continue her search for clues to the Great Horse legend.
The Legend of the Great Horse trilogy has won consistent praise and awards for storytelling interwoven with historic accuracy about peoples and lives of ancient times. The Golden Spark earned the 2012 Written Arts Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy and was a 2011 Independent Publisher Highlighted Title. Royce’s first Great Horse book, Eclipsed by Shadow, won the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Young Adult Fiction and Mom’s Choice Award for Young Adult Fantasy, earning praise from US Review of Books as “Thrilling and intelligent fantasy,” and “Page-turning… a vivid historical tale through the ages,” from the Historical Novel Society.
“I started writing these books from a long-standing desire to share horses with the public, mixed with a feeling of alarm over the loss of history in our society,” says Royce. The genesis of his Great Horses began with an equestrian-targeted television project that, he explains, “Never got off the ground. The story began to ‘take the bit between its teeth’ and become much more than I first imagined. Now I see the story as a way to show the fascinating partnership we have with horses and their deep connection to human history.”
Again illustrated by Great Horse cover artist Marti Adrian, the paperback edition of Into the Dark will be available in time for the holidays for just $16.95 through all major booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
To learn more about the Great Horse trilogy and read the first chapter of Eclipsed by Shadow free, please visit TheGreatHorse.com.
In all directions Meagan saw multicolored forms, misshapen and sprawled, but her eyes would not focus, could not comprehend the thousand squirming remains of a massacre. Shapes of animals—both man and horse—lay crushed and struggling, or else staggered blindly across acres of death.