"I am the Shadow of the Lion.The one who will survive deaths without number.The one who has lost everyone. The one wounded and betrayed.I am not the Lion. He is dead.I am his Shadow.I am his revenge."Amkela has always fought beside his older brother Nenkani, the Lion of the West and last hope of their people against the invading Karaphi Empire.
But when they are betrayed and hunted by Imperial airships, Amkela is offered power and revenge by an imprisoned being of visions and vines called dreaming-what-is-to-come. Thrust from his brother's shadow, Amkela must lead his people to freedom while keeping secret the terrible price he's paid.
When the shadow of the Empire falls across him, will Amkela be strong enough to save his people? Will he be strong enough to survive?
About the author
Jon Keevy is an award-winning writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. Which sounds like a standard start to a biography, but it gets a little odd when he includes the title of his most successful project: Genital Jousting. It's a computer game about a penis looking for a date and it was nominated for Narrative Excellence at the 2019 IGF Awards in San Francisco. After bringing that up the biography returns to normalcy with Jon's wide-ranging body of work in prose, theatre, children's books, online content and film. As is usual with biographies, he's used a list with many different genres to handwave you past the specifics of his career. And, as is also usual, he will conclude with a humanising personal fact: as a nine-year-old he wrote stories about meeting dinosaurs. His favorite is a pachycephalosaurus.
The Unwoven Warrior | Jon Keevy
ISBNs
Praise for The Unwoven Warrior
Paperback: 978-1-0672242-5-7
Ebook: 978-1-0672242-6-4
‘The Unwoven Warrior’ is a bold debut from South African author Jon Keevy, bringing an African-inspired, genre-blending sci-fi fantasy story that excellently mixes mythology, culture, and technology. We follow Amkela, thrust from the shadow of his fallen brother into the role of the reluctant hero, navigating a world of betrayal, resistance, and war against the occupying Karaphi Empire. Obviously, things don’t go to plan, and Amkela finds himself in the precarious position of having to broker a sketchy alliance in order to (hopefully...) make it out on the other side.
This book is one of breakneck action — you never know where the author is taking you next. The story simply races forward with an unpredictable energy, offering unforgettable characters and a setting that feels both strangely familiar and anxiously strange. It leaves you questioning your views of what a hero truly is supposed to be and if it’s all even worth it in the end…
It’s a wild ride, one that challenges the stock-standard tropes and that keeps you hooked to the last page. I would highly recommend this book to lovers of sci-fi and fantasy who are open to a story that doesn’t even bother to hold your hand as it races to the end.
Thank you to Mirari Press for the review copy! All opinions above are my own.
Well structured, with rich mythology and wonderfully crafted characters, The Unwoven Warrior was a delightful surprise that, in a way, brought me full circle in my reading journey. Back in the day (you know, the early 2000s, all those many, many years ago) when eleven, twelve year old me was reading anything and everything she could get her hands on, I came across a book written about the life and tragedy of Boudicca and her people, and it was real and raw down to the blood spilled and the blood hidden, and while it may be a completely different continent with different tribes and people and threats and different gods, the same complexities of what it meant to be a hero and revered when perhaps one doesn’t completely deserve it, were explored.
To have good intentions. To have compassion. To sacrifice. To become someone...else. To be flawed.
The Unwoven Warrior is a book that leaves you with questions- and for me, one of them was whether I smart enough to read this, let alone try to tackle the daunting task of reviewing it 😅 regardless, vague'ish concepts (Stephen King and what the heck is IT, really, anyone?) only added to the mystic, and left me wanting more, wanting to understand.
It's rare, with fantasy being so heavy-handed with their tropes, to be completely caught unawares by plot twists in this day and age, and yet, friends, I was. And it was delightful.
Thank you to @miraripress for gifting me with a copy of The Unwoven Warrior in exchange for an honest review.
Take the most mind-bending Blake Crouch-esque concepts, set them in a beleaguered Afrofantasy community making a desperate last stand against colonial eradication and you get this powerhouse of a genre-defying book. I barely know how to sum it up: every time I thought I knew where the story was going, it didn't just twist, it flipped to another plane of existence. At it's most basic, this is a high-action story of survival. Amkela has lived in the shadow of his older brother, charismatic war chief Nenkani. When betrayal leads to a total routing of their forces, the only hope for his people is for Amkela to broker a dangerous alliance with an entity beyond his comprehension. But THE UNWOVEN WARRIOR is also so much more than well choreographed fight scenes and a standard hero's journey. Every character has their own goals, and not all are 'part of the same whole'. It is a story that leaves you questioning what it means to a hero and if such a thing exists.
If you like a plot that keeps you on your toes and asks you to grapple with the very meaning of existence, you'll enjoy this!
Thanks to Mirari Press for providing me with a copy for review.