The Forest of Lost Souls by Dean Koontz, will publish 24th September with Thomas & Mercer and is described as ‘a novel about good versus evil, the enduring nature of myth, and the power of love’. It is a pleasure to be joining the blog tour today with an extract from the opening chapters so I do hope you enjoy.
[ About The Forest of Lost Souls ]
A fearless woman, raised in the forest, fights against a group of powerful men in this gripping novel about good versus evil, the enduring nature of myth, and the power of love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.
Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Formed by hard experience, by love and loss, and by the prophecies of a fortune teller, Vida just wants peace. If only nearby Kettleton County didn’t cast such a dark shadow.
It’s where Jose Nochelobo, the love of Vida’s life and a cherished local hero, died in a tragic accident. That’s the official story, but Vida has reasons to doubt it. The truth can’t be contained for long. Nor can the hungry men of power in Kettleton who want something too: that Vida, like Jose, disappear forever. One by one they come for her, prepared to do anything to see their plans through to their evil end.
Vida is no less prepared for them.
Vida, the forest, and its formidable wonders are waiting. She will not rest until goodness and order have been restored.
[ Extract ]
1
Harbinger
The white mountain lion, an albino female, is rarely seen in this county, though she seems to roam only here. The astonished few who have caught a glimpse of her remember the place, the day, the hour, and the circumstances as vividly and indelibly as they recall any event in their lives. Like others of her species that are of a more common coloration, she mostly sleeps by day and stalks the world in darkness. Whether she appears pale and fluid in a shadowy forest, striding through a meadow at dusk, prowling a ridgeline in little more than starlight, or crossing a highway at night, her eyes like yellow lanterns, she is beautiful and terrifying, a majestic three-hundred-pound predator that inspires awe and terror in the same instant, a kind of sacred love.
She has been seen in a moonlit cemetery, gliding like a spirit among the headstones. She has lazed on the steps of a church in the first radiance of the hidden sun before it rose above the mountains. She has been observed drinking at dusk from the water in the deep lakelet that formed in what was long ago a stone quarry. These sightings and certain others have led some to attribute to her a dire prognostic power. They claim she’s an omen of death because a groundskeeper died of a heart attack a day later in that cemetery, because the minister of the church perished in a rectory fire soon after the lion’s dawn visit, and because two children drowned in the quarry pool less than twenty-four hours after the big cat drank from it. Those who give credence to this superstition call her Azrael, after the angel of death. Of course, people die with regularity whether Azrael appears or not. Perhaps the only death she will truly foretell is her own, when her twenty years are behind her and she retreats to some place deep in the forest, there to lie on the couch of her own everlasting sleep.
2
The Watcher in the Woods
For three days, a watcher takes up various positions among the trees. Because he moves only within purple shadows as the traveling sun elongates them, he apparently believes he can’t be seen. When he startles a flock of birds roosting overhead, he must assume their sudden, noisy eruption into flight means nothing to the woman whom he’s observing. Judging by the frequency with which his binoculars reflect sunlight and reveal his position, Vida decides that the watcher is not experienced at surveillance. When he indulges in marijuana, he seems to think she cannot smell it when she’s sitting on her porch, at a distance of perhaps forty yards. However, her senses have not been dulled by the riotous mélange of odors common to places that are said to be more civilized than this rustic realm. Although city-born, she’s been gone from that place for twenty-three years. The metropolis is a memory so faded that it seems to have been no more than a dream.
She has long been of the land. She’s been formed by the truths of the wilderness, by the wonder and the myths that nature inspires, by hard experience, by love and loss, by the prophecy of a traveling seer in a white robe and yellow sneakers. The watcher among the trees does not worry her. The forest is hers not just by day but also by night, when the moon is her lamp whether it has risen or not. She knows most of the paths, and when she does not know the way, the children of the forest will lead her where she needs to go, in safety. Sooner or later, the watcher will come to her with a confidence that he will learn is misplaced
The Forest of Lost Souls ~ Purchase Link
[ Bio ]
Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition when he was a senior in college, and has been writing ever since. Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list (One Door Away From Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street), making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone.
Sixteen of his books have risen to the number one position in paperback. His books have also been major bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden. Many of his books have been made into films.
X ~ @deankoontz
