oh mary oliver, we're really in it now

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Attention ancient history nerds and fans of really weird and unusual fantasy books, THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS kickstarter campaign just launched!

Hello, btw, I'm Alexandra Rowland, the author of A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND, YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION, and several other books. This is my new one!!

Inspired by the story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, THE WISDOM OF EMPERORS is a second-world adult fantasy novel written in the style of a fictional academic text. It documents the translation and study of a world-changing artifact discovered in an archaeological dig: a manuscript which provides the clues to finally unravel one of the most perplexing mysteries in all of ancient history.

If this sounds like your jam, go back it on kickstarter! If you're not sure whether it is your jam, the merch reveal updates on the campaign include excerpts from the book so you can get a flavor for it -- the ENTIRE Foreword to the book is on there!

I do not have a publisher to help with a marketing and publicity budget, so this book's success really depends on grassroots support from readers -- if you can spare a signal boost, that'd be amazing.

I'M GONNA GO WALK INTO THE SEA NOW AND BECOME ONE WITH THE MOLLUSCS, but before i do, here is the full summary of the book:

SUMMARY:

     An ancient emperor who, along with his entire army, vanished from the historical record for ten years, as if into thin air. A long-suffering scribe, dragged along on a quest that was doomed from the start, furiously scrawling his thoughts in a manuscript that will be lost for millennia. An enslaved young man, as beautiful as a marble statue, breaking his chains and flying to freedom. And a patient, steadfast scholar, dauntlessly seeking the answer to a mystery that has plagued historians for two thousand years.

The great tragedy of studying history is that there is so much we will never know. But a recent archaeological excavation has discovered an ancient manuscript, allegedly the journal kept by one of Emperor Cabian’s scribes during the years of his mysterious disappearance. Though most historians initially dismissed it as a hoax or a forgery, Amatio Orlanti took on the challenge—not only proving the authenticity of the manuscript, but translating it, uncovering the most jaw-dropping corroborating sources and, at last, presenting these astonishing revelations to the world: The truth of Cabian’s ill-fated journey, the twin poisons of imperialist violence and desperate, misguided love that drove him relentlessly onwards, and the ultimate fate of his lost beloved, the legendary beauty Anaticula. This new edition of Orlanti’s dissertation, with its academic commentaries and explanatory footnotes now revised for the general public, offers a glimpse of one of the most famous figures of Ancient Lausa—and casts a light on the rot and depravity lying behind the empire’s outward magnificence.

Miracles in history and archaeology just don’t happen… except when they do.

remember me as you pass by

as you are now so once was I

as I am now you will surely be