Beneath the Lanterns
About this ebook
When the son of the ruler of the Empire of Azere, Lefe Sol, is told, to his dismay, that he is to marry the eccentric fourth daughter of the Empress of Jasmyne, his friend, Kel Cam, offers to stand by and help him meet this challenge. Kel, however, soon finds himself entangled in the affairs of two great empires, and discovers, to his own dismay, that no good deed goes unpunished.
Beneath the Lanterns is set in an imaginary world of colorful cities, wide steppes, and valleys littered with the ruins of a long lost civilization. It’s a world with 16 days of daylight under the yellow lantern, and equally long nights lit by the blue lantern. Caught in the intrigues of empires, Kel Cam is forced to flee for his liberty, if not his life, across this wide and wild world. Beneath the Lanterns is a lighthearted novel of adventure and romance.
C. Litka writes old-fashioned novels with modern sensibilities, humor, and romance. His lighthearted novels of adventure, mystery, and travel are set in richly imagined worlds and feature a colorful cast of well drawn characters. If you seek to escape, for a few hours, your everyday life, you will not find better company, nor more wonderful worlds to travel and explore, than in the novels of C. Litka.
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About the author
I read hundreds of science fiction books in my youth. Since then I've read many other types of novels; detective stories, mysteries, adventure stories, humor, and sea stories, most written in the first half of the 20th century. All these different types of stories have shaped the stories I now write.
My long space opera/planetary romance, “The Bright Black Sea” and “The Lost Star's Sea” borrow their themes from my fond memories of those early science fiction stories, and, as I've come to realize, from Edgar Rice Burroughs in particular. Their story style, however, reflects the adventure stories of the late Victorian and Edwardian age, by the likes of H Rider Haggard and the sea stories of C J Cutcliffe Hyne and Guy Gilpatric.
“A Summer In Amber” draws its inspiration from the Scottish stories of John Bucham and Compton Mackenzie, as well as Downton Abbey.
“Some Day Days,” it's a rather experimental romance whose perigee is far from clear, even to me.
My newest novel, "Beneath the Lanterns," was written as a fantasy adventure. However, its primary fantasy element is that it is set in an imaginary land, and so it can also be read as a straight adventure or even as science fiction, since it has a science fiction backstory.
What all these stories have it common is that they are stories written the way I enjoy my fiction – lighthearted, character-driven stories with danger, adventure, humor and a bit of romance told from the “ground level” of first person narratives.
As for me, well, I've lived a very ordinary life. One wife, two grown children, a couple of grandchildren, no dogs, no cats, one car and a house in a small Midwest town. Besides writing for a couple of hours each morning, I paint impressionist paintings,
( http://litka.deviantart.com/ ) put several thousand miles on my bike each year, putter around the yard in summer and the web in winter.
