The Endless Song

by Joshua Phillip Johnson Narrated by Leo Wringer, Belinda Fenty

Overview

The second book in this environmental epic fantasy series delves into the mysteries of a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.
After setting fire to the Forever Sea and leaving the surface world behind, Kindred Greyreach dives below to find a Seafloor populated by roving bands of scavengers. Among them, Kindred discovers a familiar face working to save the Sea from the continued spread of the Greys and the ravages of the world above. But when Kindred finds herself at odds with them, she and her friends will have to use every power available to them--including their link to the surface world--to forestall disaster.

Meanwhile, above, a boy named Flitch, son of the Baron of the Borders, finds himself caught in a dangerous political crisis as survivors from Arcadia and the Once-City arrive on the Mainland. When Flitch begins to receive messages from someone below the Sea, the denizens of the Mainland see it as a sign that ancient enemies from across the Forever Sea are returning. The resulting crisis forces Flitch and his siblings to flee, as they seek out the truth hidden in old stories.

Above and below, Flitch and Kindred will have to work together to save themselves, their loved ones, and the Forever Sea itself.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for The Endless Song

"This series finale showcases the wonder and strangeness of Johnson’s world, with descriptions both terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. Readers looking for inventive, thoughtful fantasy will find plenty to enjoy." —Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Forever Sea

“I can rarely remember being this excited for a debut novel. This was everything I wanted it to be. Wind-swept prairie seas, pirates, magic, and found families.” —Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning author of the Lady Astronaut series

“Richly imagined and beautifully written, with a highly original and very creepy magic system—The Forever Sea is wonderful.” —R. F. Kuang, Astounding Award-winning author of The Poppy War

"What an amazing world—from the ecosystem, to the ships that ply the deep grass sea, to the magic and people within!" —Fran Wilde, two-time Nebula-winning author of Riverland and Updraft

“Loved The Forever Sea. Loved it. Sheer joy.” —Joanne Harris, internationally bestselling author of Chocolat

“A beautifully imagined dive into the unknown.” —G.V. Anderson, World Fantasy Award winning author of "Das Steingeschöpf"

“Beautifully lyrical and imaginative, Johnson's debut sings a twisting tale of adventure full of diverse characters and a lush world ripe to fall in love with. With a heart that will haunt you, this ecopunk story is unlike any you've seen before.” —Linden A. Lewis, author of The First Sister

"In this rich and well-realized world, magic has an ecological price as well as profit, and conflicts are between equally complicated communities rather than simplistic good vs. evil. This ending of this excellent debut promises more adventures in its fragile, Miyazaki-esque world." —Booklist (starred review)

"Johnson’s beautiful coming-of-age saga touches on subjects of conservation, water rights, morality, and relationships.... The book’s setting and plot are so original as to be a breath of fresh air to the fantasy genre." —Library Journal (starred review)

“Lush descriptions of plant life abound... When combined with the exceptional protagonist and themes of embracing the unknown, [The Forever Sea] calls to mind Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series. With a good balance of grit and tenderness, this entertaining story makes a nice addition to the growing hopepunk subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175027953
Publisher:	W. F. Howes Ltd
Publication date:	02/14/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	971,109

Read an Excerpt

The storyteller sits in Twist-that-was-Arcadia and listens to a scream cut the early morning air.

“Sing,” he whispers to the darkness, to the chains heavy against his papery skin.

He is silent and still as questions are asked around the city, as disbelief turns to shock, as decisions are made. The shifting of power from one set of shoulders to another long ago lost any interest for him.

A woman has died, her body become an empty relic. Another will take her mantle and dream her dreams. A race without beginning and marked by endings. A race that, if run, can only be lost.

He packs the book carefully, giving the last half-filled page a final look before stowing it in his bag.

While Twist reckons with the change, the storyteller prepares himself for the end of the tale, the flowering of history into present. He lets the memories rise from where he has buried them, hidden from the slow forgetting that takes more and more of him every day.

Until now, he has told a story that is not his own. No more.

“Sing,” he whispers, for himself now. “Sing, memory.”

A home on the edge of the Sea. A family broken and broken again. A secret held across generations, hidden behind an archway of stone.

All of it returns to the storyteller, but the battles and the struggles and the myths and the magic mean so little to him now. He sifts through it all, an old man letting dirt and detritus fall through his loose, cupped hands to find the few grains mixed in.

A young boy, shoulders hunched against the night and all its terrors, creeping along a hallway, looking for shelter.

That same young boy, head full of stories and eyes pulled to the horizon, dreaming of adventure, of glory, of finding and taking his place in the world.

And later, much later, a voice full of new-dawn hope, saying, “I’ll see you after.”

This, the storyteller dwells on, letting the words weigh on him, as if they might hold down the loose tatters he has become after all this time. He fills in the timbre and melody of that voice, piecing it together slowly. Rediscovering every fragment and facet, relishing the pain as he cuts himself on the jagged edges of remembering.

Here is his gift, the memory becoming as fresh and clear as ever it was, painful and pure.
And here, too, is his penance, riding close behind, payment for a bargain made long ago, yes, but in some way, payment for all of this. For the world this world has become.

Once, he sought the peace Kindred found in all of it, but such peace was smoke in his hands. Gone with the barest breath of hope.

When Praise comes to get him, the storyteller has resurrected teeth and lips and face and eyes and hair—pulled them back and given them life again in his memory.

A new First walks with Praise now, a tall man, young and wide-eyed. He might live into old age. He might not.

Praise says nothing of the change. Death is a close friend here, always nearby. To be surprised by it is weakness, stupidity.

“Did you sleep all right?” Praise asks, a nervous question. Last time, he did not ask, and perhaps it is this change, so slight and unimportant, that helps the storyteller decide.

Penance, he has come to learn, is not something paid alone.

“Of course,” the storyteller lies. They’ll know the truth soon enough, and have forgotten it soon enough, too. No need for complications.

“Are you hungry?” the new First asks, his voice like an echo of one the storyteller has heard before, and though it takes him a moment—a long, long moment—he finds its source.

“Tae. Twyllyn Tae. Does that name mean something to you?” he asks this new First, whose wide eyes grow even wider at the sound of his voice. “A father? Grandfather, maybe?”

The First swallows and casts an anxious look to Praise before responding.

“My grandmother’s grandfather.”

Had the storyteller air in his lungs to sigh, he might have. He could have shaken his head and looked about, noting the passage of time like a river running ever on or a plant growing ever up. Shock and vague sadness might have curled his lips and darkened his countenance.

So long. It had been so long.

Instead, he nods and says, “A good man. A wonderful sailor.”

I’ll see you after.

Now that he has resurrected that voice, the storyteller cannot stop the memories from rising in him, specters of a past embodied in his every movement, his every word. What is he if not a plant grown in that old graveyard soil, fed by those long-ago waters, reaching for the light of a sun pulling ever farther away?

The First has spoken to him again, and Praise, too.

“What was that?” he asks, pushing the memories down, knowing they will return. He needs to resume the story now.

“Are you hungry for anything?” this descendant of Twyllyn Tae asks again.

“No, thank you,” the storyteller says.

Praise unlocks the chains and leads the three of them back out of the house, back through the overgrown streets of Twist, back to the fires and the dais and the listeners, all of them hungry and waiting.

“We have all had a challenging morning,” the First says, speaking with growing confidence to those assembled. “What better to soothe our hurt than the completion of a promised tale?”

He gestures to the storyteller, who mounts the dais and lets his eyes rove the audience, ringed again around their fires. One by one he finds their eyes, noting those who look away in shame and those who stare back, angry and proud.

At the back, angriest and proudest of all, is Praise, and when the storyteller finds this man’s eyes, he does not look away.

Yes, he will be the one. A fitting payment for a tale well told.

“Did the fires consume the whole Sea?” someone shouts.

“Did Kindred make it to the Sea floor?” another asks.

“What happened to the pirates and to Arcadia?”

“Did she find the Marchess?”

They have chewed these questions all night, working and wondering at them. They expected a story, neat and tidy and complete. An escape.

The storyteller accepts an offered cup of water from one of Praise’s men, and after letting the water touch his lips, he steps forward. A raised hand quiets the questions.

“My tale thus far has asked many questions, some still on your minds, I see. Today, you shall have answers,” he says, letting his eyes drift to the youngest among the group, children with no idea of his mistreatment, no sense of what the leaders of Twist have done and will do again to hold on to even the smallest protections.

In the faces of these children he finds again that wry, clever joy, the suspense and wonder found only on the precipice of a story soon to be sung.

I’ll see you after.

“I have told you already of Kindred Greyreach, first among the hearthfire keepers of Arcadia, who, through trickery and manipulation, took her ship and its crew out past safe grasses and into the Roughs, where monsters from the deep and pirates of the surface dwelled. I have told of her grandmother, the Marchess, who was said to disappear from her ship into the Sea, stepping down into the black below. I have told of Kindred finding the Once-City, home to those pirates. I have told of the mysteries there, and the banal realities, too. A struggle for water, a struggle for power, and Kindred at its center.

“When last I spoke, Kindred had escaped the crumbling Once-City and set fire to the flattened grasses of the Sea around Arcadia, creating a temporary barrier between the pirates and the island itself. In a boat made of grass, Kindred, now a captain, along with Ragged Sarah and Seraph, sailed below the Sea, down toward whatever waited below.”

The listeners had shifted forward, most without realizing it, their eyes on the storyteller, their breaths slowing and evening out against the rhythms of his telling. Soon they would all breathe together, a chorus of silent voices, held completely in his power.

But not yet.

I’ll see you after.

He is caught for a moment in the memory of what comes next, the threads of past, present, and future knotting together in him.

“First,” the storyteller says, holding up a finger and grinning down at the kids, who watch him with greatest interest, unguarded and honest, “let me tell of another. Hold on to the burning Arcadian Sea for a moment, and to Kindred’s joyous dive beneath, and instead see a boy. Young, like some here. Dreaming of adventure, of heroism, of great deeds done by his own hands. Dreaming, too, of a family that was and might be again. If Kindred’s name should be known by all, sung in every language, revered and loved, then let this boy’s name be a forgotten curse. Let it dribble from the corner of your mouth in dreaming, lost again upon waking. A bare memory, already disappearing.”

The storyteller pauses, not to draw out the tension nor to stoke the fires he sees in every eye watching him.

He pauses because this is the moment the forgetting will commence. When he utters that single syllable, the name he carries with him always, the slow wash of oblivion will begin to slacken mouths and glass over keen eyes. All will slowly be lost save for the barest memory of him, a hollow remembering for a hollow man.

And when he speaks, a being out in that darkness beyond Twist will turn its vast attention toward him. It will cock its head, listening as he spills out this story, and then it will approach, skimming and sliding through the endless night, unhurried.

It has done this before. It will do this again.

The storyteller pauses in the last moments before the end.

“As we begin our story, this boy is sitting with his family on what will be one of his last good days. One of his last happy moments. His name is Flitch o’ the Borders. A boy, nothing more, searching for his story.”

Videos