Jac Forsyth
spec-fiction
COMING SOON
The Song of the Lark
ØRMA
Book One
of the
Mandolin
ØRMA
The Song of the Lark
We grow tired of waiting for you to go extinct
​
When an extraordinary superspecies emerges in Afghanistan, humans do what they do best: declare war and make a reality TV show.
​
Half a world away, Hollow Quinn forsakes the safety of civilian life and volunteers to join the British army. Her only friend Ezra Blake, justifies the decision not to enlist, taking solace in a gothic anomaly full of magical innovation, mystical intrigue and self-aware furniture.
But when Hollow grabs a starring role in a TV reality show based at a frontline field hospital, Ezra is forced to watch Hollow's career spiral through a landscape of global fame, national duty and personal treason. And as their lives intersect, the two friends discover the terrifying consequences of WØLF. A reality TV show created for war, and designed for public entertainment.
'It didn’t seem like the start, it seemed like just another reality TV series. And we invited it in. Into our homes. Into our chat. Into our minds. Day after day, something so foul and so unthinkable. Day after day. Until it became something ordinary, something thinkable.
WØLF was our hope, I suppose. And we burned with it. Not like flames, but like leaves and dry tinder. A whole nation army, ignited and consumed in the fire of hope.'
Set against a backdrop of desert warfare and gothic revival architecture, ØRMA is a world that exists between reality and fantasy. A world where the outcome of a war can rest on something as meaningless as missing a bus.
Packed full of humour and delicious surprises, ØRMA is the first book in the Mandolin series, a SFF take on modern living and the spiralling cost of human disconnection.
The
MANDOLIN
The driving dilemma of the Mandolin series is how Homo sapiens come to terms with the discovery that they are the rats of the hominid family tree. Not easy for a species so desperate to be loved.
The 2020s have seen an epidemic of anxiety and a desperate loneliness among young people. Ørma exposes the symptoms of disconnection, but also offers hope for the future. There is a gender fluidity to many of the book's characters, with ambiguous names and absent pronouns, allowing readers to recognise themselves in the characters, discover things about themselves and challenge societal stereotypes.
Ørma is Book One of the MANDOLIN. A speculative fiction series that recognises how hard it is to be human in the twenty first century. Its heroes aren’t created in extraordinary battles or red carpet events, but discovered in the ordinary, untidy humanness of us.
