Sacrifice of the First Sheason
By Peter Orullian
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Sheason (SHAY-son): Members of this Order possess the ability to renderer the Will—influence Forda I’Forza. When the First Ones abandoned their work in Aeshau, they conferred the authority to direct the Will in the interest of men to a select few. The right and privilege to render has since been passed down only after vigorous training. Though their order was conceived on the principle of service and sacrifice, they are often disliked for their sometimes secretive nature and their propensity to allow apparently dangerous or inappropriate actions to occur in the interest of what is deemed ‘best.’ The Sheason are also sometimes known also a “three ring” for the emblem that signifies their order: Three rings inside of each other, and all meeting at one point. From the Language of the Covenant, meaning “servant.”
Sacrifice of the First Sheason is a short story written by Peter Orullian, author of The Unremembered, Book One of The Vault of Heaven. I read it because I’d recently heard Peter talking on a podcast about having handed in Book Two to his editor at Tor.
I liked The Unremembered well enough that I was interested to hear Book Two was moving ahead, so I figured I’d go and read this story I’d seen online just before The Unremembered had come out.
I really wish I had read this first.
I’ve been reading fantasy for a long time, and I still have blinkers on in regards to what I like and what I think is ‘good’. So when jumping into the world of the the Vault of Heaven all I saw was the similarities to other works – well one in particular – rather than the what Peter was doing in his story.
Now it could be argued that it is the writers job to make it clear what is going on in the world in which he is writing – and I don’t think it takes from the mystery of things to come or the slow reveal because what I am talking about is the set-up. The stage.
Anyway.
I read Sacrifice of the First Sheason. It’s really good. And it goes a long way to opening up just what is happening in the world of The Unremembered, it answers questions about ‘how do they know that’ etc. It fills in gaps that I really feel should have been filled in in the book. But it is a big book and I dare say as a frst time author he was constrained by the word count his publisher was willing to allow him. And if that wasn’t the case well… well we can only hope that given the opportunity Peter’s story telling skills will get stronger.
If you have any interest in The Unremembered and you haven’t read it, go here now and do so. It opens up everything. Now I am going to have to go back and re-read The Unremembered with fresh eyes…. when I have the time.
The Unremembered
The Vault of Heaven Book One
By Peter Orullian
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The gods, makers of worlds, seek to create balance – between matter and energy; and between mortals who strive toward the transcendent, and the natural perils they must tame or overcome. But one of the gods fashions a world filled with hellish creatures far too powerful to allow balance; he is condemned to live for eternity with his most hateful creations in that world’s distant Bourne, restrained by a magical veil kept vital by the power of song.
Millennia pass, awareness of the hidden danger fades to legend, and both song and veil weaken. And the most remote cities are laid waste by fell, nightmarish troops escaped from the Bourne. Some people dismiss the attacks as mere rumour. Instead of standing against the real threat, they persecute those with the knowledge, magic and power to fight these abominations, denying the inevitability of war and annihilation. And the evil from the Bourne swells…
The troubles of the world seem far from the Hollows where Tahn Junell struggles to remember his lost childhood and to understand words he feels compelled to utter each time he draws his bow. Trouble arrives when two strangers – an enigmatic man wearing the sigil of the feared Order of Sheason and a beautiful woman of the legendary Far – come, to take Tahn, his sister and his two best friends on a dangerous, secret journey. Tahn knows neither why nor where they will go. He knows only that terrible forces have been unleashed upon mankind and he has been called to stand up and face that which most daunts him – his own forgotten secrets and the darkness that would destroy him and his world.
