The Silver Sail

by Bridgette Portman

Overview

A looming supernova. A long-lost starship. A hero turned evil.

Olive Joshi never meant to fall through a portal into her own abandoned novel, much less kill her protagonist and resurrect her as a villain. Now she's on the run in a universe quickly spiraling out of her control.

After narrowly escaping Coseema with her life, Olive and her friends head for a distant planet in search of the legendary starship the Wave-Rider, which may be the only hope for the doomed people of Lyria. But the voyage there is littered with obstacles—the tyrannical ruler of a dying colony, a mysterious spacefarer, the ever-present threat of Coseema, and Olive's own obsessive fears. Back on Lyria, Olive's allies face obstacles of their own as they vie with the cruel emperor Burnash, while Burnash himself chafes under Coseema's control. Olive, armed with her omniscient journal, finds comfort in reading along with her friends' adventures. But when time runs out, she must embark on a risky collision course with her former heroine, one that may force her to give up what she treasures most.

The Silver Sail, Book Two of the Coseema Saga, is a must-read for fans of portal fantasy, space opera, coming-of-age adventures, and novels about mental health, self-esteem, friendship, and courage in the face of uncertainty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780995920460
Publisher:	Titan1Studios Inc.
Publication date:	05/02/2022
Series:	The Coseema Saga , #2
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Bridgette Dutta Portman is an author, playwright, and teaching artist. Dozens of her plays have been produced across the United States and overseas. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Spalding University, as well as a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine. She is past president of the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco and is currently a board member of the Pear Theatre and a member of the Dramatists' Guild. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Deepanshu and their two young children. To learn more about Bridgette and her writing, visit http://www.bridgetteduttaportman.com.

Editorial Reviews

2022-06-03
A teenage aspiring fantasy author teleported to the dystopic star system of her own fiction tries to protect her friends and elude pursuit by destructive forces, including a frighteningly corrupted superhero.

Portman continues the Coseema Saga, a YA epic fantasy/SF series that began with The Twin Stars (2021), featuring a teen writer haplessly lost in the far-out fictional universe of her imagination. Olive Joshi, 16, is trapped in an exotic star system she conceived in her notebook, an abandoned storytelling effort. It is nightmarish, an unstable arrangement of dying dual suns throwing solar flares on the planet Lyria, where “a brutal tyrant” named Burnash is the main villain—until the resurrection of his sister, Coseema. Originally a superpowered figure of virtue and strength (faintly resembling the self-doubting Olive), Coseema returned from her death/defeat a vengeful, sadistic, bat-winged fiend who covets limitless power that she may achieve by obtaining her creator’s notebook. After her narrow escape from Coseema, Olive has the notebook, but the superhero has the matching custom pen for writing in it. Now, as Coseema and Burnash viciously search Lyria for the Earth girl, Olive and her allies escape via spaceship to outer planets in the system, where an escape space-ark craft, the Wave-Rider, may remain as a last resort for Lyrians. The odyssey brings Olive and her friends (whom, don’t forget, she originally wrote, and for whom she feels tremendous, guilty responsibility) to new revelations and surprising and shocking reunions. Meanwhile, descriptions and narratives in Olive’s notebook continue to appear. But written by whom? The story’s ambiance is a blend of science and sword-and-sorcery magic, and often it is difficult to get a sense of the ground rules at work. But then again, one could argue this is exactly the dilemma that would be faced in a tyro effort from a novice author coming to grips with her inner Neil Gaiman, with half-formed characters and sketchy conceits taking on lives of their own. This sequel does suffer from middle-chapter syndrome, with interconnected ensemble characters whose entrances and exits and backstories are hard to trace without a chart. But by the ending, readers should be sufficiently hooked to follow the vivid, ominous threads into the next volume.

An engaging installment of a complicated SF/fantasy series about a besieged writer.

Kirkus Reviews