: Laura E. Goodin
: After the Bloodwood Staff
: Odyssey Books
: 9781922200730
: 1
: CHF 4.40
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 282
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

The sedentary and impractical Hoyle meets Sybil Alvaro in a used bookstore, and she invites him to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author in a search for the mysterious Bloodwood Staff. He's spent his entire life reading vintage adventure action, and thinks he knows how these things should go.
In the mountains west of Sydney, his expectations are almost immediately derailed, as nobody - not Sybil, and certainly not the irrepressible Ada Drake, stand-in for the obligatory plucky urchin - behaves the way they're supposed to.
As they gradually realise that their lighthearted adventure has put themselves and their loved ones in dire peril, Hoyle is forced to face the fact that he is woefully unsuited to be the stereotypical hero.
A deliberate subversion of adventure, fantasy and satire tropes, After the Bloodwood Staff is a brilliant and unexpected ride.

Chapter 1: In Which Hoyle Meets an Adventurer


The bookstore was a barn of a place. Hoyle thought it might have been an actual barn at one point, judging from the smell that underlay the scents of musty paper, old leather, and expensive coffee. He’d driven an hour from the DC suburbs to get here; a post on his favorite adventure-fiction forum had recommended it as a good source for overlooked authors. And he needed a change of scene. The pile of what looked like sawdust pellets that he’d found in a corner of the garage last week had filled him with a vague but relentless dread that somewhere in his house lurked a brood of termites. He’d been trying to get the nerve up to phone somebody for days. The dread had swooped again as soon as he had woken up. But it was Sunday.Can’t do anything about it today, he had thought almost jauntily. The bookstore would be the ideal distraction.

He could feel his mood lifting as he wandered along the first aisle, turning from dull worry to the bright eagerness of the hunt. He knew the look of the books he wanted; he almost didn’t have to read the spines anymore.

Oh, that one looked about right. He reached, and his hand was knocked aside by a painful swat.

“I saw it first,” snapped the woman who’d hit him. Her was hair slightly grey, like his. She was significantly shorter, but stocky enough to put a bit of sting in the swat.

“What the hell?” he cried. But she was already striding toward the cash register.

Hoyle felt a wave of loss and frustration. He rushed to the register. “Hey,” he called to the woman as she finished paying and carefully placed the book in her tote bag. “Hey, wait.” She gave him an annoyed look over her shoulder. “Please,” he said. He caught up to her. “Please. Just let me see what it was. I didn’t even get a chance …”

She hesitated, then drew the book out.After the Bloodwood Staff, by C.G. Ingraham. The cover was a faded mustard color, the title printed in an enticing Art Nouveau font. Without thinking, he ran one finger gently across the cover, feeling the rough cloth, and the slightly smoother lines of