Storyteller [Paperback]

"Smooth, well crafted, and entertaining ... It's like a rich
chocolate dessert, savor it and enjoy.

"Excellence personified! ... unfolds like a blossoming rose in
time-lapse. Grove is a consummate storyteller ... one of the best.

Smooth, well crafted, and entertaining ... It's like a rich
chocolate dessert, savor it and enjoy.

Excellence personified! ... unfolds like a blossoming rose in
time-lapse. Grove is a consummate storyteller ... one of the best.

A unique blend of history, myth and fantasy ... unexpectedly
moving.

As accurate as it can be and always entertaining ... a truly
involving, gently dramatic, introduction to a saga.

"Blood and fire, gold and steel and poetry, a river's voice in the silence of the night, and the shining strings of a harp - all these and more I have known in my time... Now they are all gone, the men and women I knew when I was young, gone like words on the wind, and I am left here in the twilight to tell you their tale. Sit, then, and listen if you will to the words of Gwernin Kyuarwyd, called Storyteller." So begins the tale of the young Gwernin's adventures as a wandering storyteller and would-be bard in the chaos and contradictions of 6th century Britain. Along the way he encounters allies and enemies both human and supernatural, finds love and friendship, and learns the lore -and the true meaning - of a Bard's profession.

The year is 550 AD. In the east Justinian the Great rules
over the remains of the Roman Empire; in Italy the Goths still hold Rome
itself. In northern Europe tribes are on the march, and boundaries and
alliances are changing with the seasons. In Britain King Arthur is dead,
and he and his brief peace are passing into legend. And in the land which
will one day be called Wales, a young man named Gwernin sets out on his
summer circuit as a traveling storyteller, little knowing the adventures
that lie ahead of him. Told in the true voice of a medieval storyteller,
this novel is the first book in an exciting new series. The second volume,
The Flight of the Hawk, is scheduled for publication in October 2007.

"Na, there will always be need for Bards," said Kyan. "If not
to sing the warriors' deeds now, then to remember those who fought before,
and teach those who will fight afterwards the way of it... We are like the
pin in the cloak-clasp, the smallest, plainest part, and yet without it the
brooch falls away and is lost, and the cloak with it, and the man perishes
from the cold. So is it with us. If the Bards should ever take the
Druids' road west, it would be a black day for the Cymry, for what is there
to hold a people together who do not remember their past?"