Mirror World Publishing and Sapphyria's Book Promotions present the 1-week virtual book tour for
Nine Levels by Elana Gomel.
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Waking up on the beach in Greece after a midnight party, Cleo, a British-Greek tourist, sees a stranger sitting next to her. The stranger has a giant spider on his forearm.
So begins an incredible odyssey through the nine levels of the mysterious mountain populated by an odd assortment of monsters, demons, and avatars of dead gods. Still grieving the unsolved disappearance of her twin sister Cora, Cleo is thrust into the world whose rules she does not understand and whose inhabitants confound everything she thought she knew about Greek mythology. Confronted by Woven Women, masked huntresses, sentient graffiti, and Mother of Monsters, Cleo has to make sense of it all. And meanwhile, a mysterious Call reverberates in her brain: You have to go up. You have to find your sister.
A story of self-discovery, courage, and breathtaking adventure, Nine Levels is a highly imaginative, innovative, and engrossing retelling of familiar legends with a twist you won’t see coming.
Excerpt:
Cleo licked her lips, enjoying the pungent taste of sea salt. The spume flicked her parched skin, peppering it with tiny droplets. Her eyes were filled with a red glow as the sun shone through the closed lids. The warmth was just the right side of heat, thawing out her stiff muscles. Her soaked clothes were slowly drying into a crusty armor.
The bench creaked as somebody heavy sat on the other end. Cleo reluctantly unglued her mascara-caked lashes.
The man was indeed big and heavy, so much so that the promenade bench seemed to tilt toward him, lifting Cleo into the air like a child on a seesaw. He sat with his eyes closed, his broad face turned toward the sun. And there was a large spider on his left arm.
She gulped and scooted away, almost falling off the bench. The man did not move. The spider, as big as Cleo’s fist, did not move either, but its angled legs, haloed with shiny hairs, twitched slightly, showing it was no bizarre decoration or a toy. Its golden head, sunken into its globular body, was peppered with multiple dot-eyes, each swiveling independently of the rest as they focused on Cleo.
She slid off the bench and stood up, her joints creaking and her damp jeans chafing her inner thighs. She rubbed her eyes, disregarding the fact that she was embedding the smears of yesterday’s makeup deeper into her tired skin. She blinked, then looked back. The spider lazily spread out its legs across the man’s tattooed arm. Each leg ended in a small, hooked claw, and its swollen abdomen pulsed with amber highlights.
Okay, so she had been drunk. Okay, so she might have hooked up with a Dutch tourist, which was a mistake – if it had happened. But one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she had not taken any drugs. Her sister’s fate was the best guarantee of clean living. So, she had a pint or two occasionally. So, on this Greek vacation she had overdone the combination of retsina, Moscofilero white wine, and the shockingly sweet liqueur called mastika. But it was a vacation, for Christ’s sake! Wasn’t she entitled to let her hair down a bit? She ran her hand over the stubble on her head which had dried into a collection of scratchy spikes.
She edged away from the bench, refusing to look back at the big man with his eight-legged pet and walked to the parapet separating the promenade from the beach below. The sugary-white sand glistened in the blinding sunlight that stabbed into Cleo’s bruised brain. The indigo wavelets licked at the beach margin scattered with shells. The beach was surprisingly empty: no tourists on tatty towels; no coolers, umbrellas, or kids. And no signs of their impromptu party that started last night when Cleo, Mick, Iris, and a couple of Dutch boys whose names she could not remember had spread their blankets in the balmy Mediterranean night on the shore of Syros.
Had they simply abandoned her and walked back to the hotel? But why? Try as she might, Cleo could not remember anything out of the ordinary except the retsina whose piney taste seemed to take up permanent residence in her parched mouth. And why was she soaked? It felt like sometime in the night she had walked into the Aegean fully clothed. Skinny-dipping was one thing, but swimming in your jeans in the midnight sea? And yet, a vague memory, like a disintegrating dream, nibbled at the edges of her mind with images of inky waves, bathwater-warm, embracing her as she swam toward…what?
Cleo squinted into the glare, expecting to see the tawny silhouettes of the smaller Cycladic islands surrounding Syros, but the blue immensity appeared to be empty. Not quite true – there was some vague vertical protrusion on the horizon, shimmering in the sunlight, but the hangover headache suddenly bore into Cleo’s temples with such brutal intensity that she gasped and folded down onto the pavement. She kept her eyes shut for a moment and then swiveled away from the sea, subconsciously noting that her dark glasses were apparently gone together with her backpack. At least her credit cards were back at the hotel – if she could make it. Without dark glasses, the flaming July sun in Greece would burn out her blue British eyes and shrivel her damp British brain. Was it what was happening to her? Was she hallucinating giant spiders as a result of a sunstroke?
The bench creaked as somebody heavy sat on the other end. Cleo reluctantly unglued her mascara-caked lashes.
The man was indeed big and heavy, so much so that the promenade bench seemed to tilt toward him, lifting Cleo into the air like a child on a seesaw. He sat with his eyes closed, his broad face turned toward the sun. And there was a large spider on his left arm.
She gulped and scooted away, almost falling off the bench. The man did not move. The spider, as big as Cleo’s fist, did not move either, but its angled legs, haloed with shiny hairs, twitched slightly, showing it was no bizarre decoration or a toy. Its golden head, sunken into its globular body, was peppered with multiple dot-eyes, each swiveling independently of the rest as they focused on Cleo.
She slid off the bench and stood up, her joints creaking and her damp jeans chafing her inner thighs. She rubbed her eyes, disregarding the fact that she was embedding the smears of yesterday’s makeup deeper into her tired skin. She blinked, then looked back. The spider lazily spread out its legs across the man’s tattooed arm. Each leg ended in a small, hooked claw, and its swollen abdomen pulsed with amber highlights.
Okay, so she had been drunk. Okay, so she might have hooked up with a Dutch tourist, which was a mistake – if it had happened. But one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she had not taken any drugs. Her sister’s fate was the best guarantee of clean living. So, she had a pint or two occasionally. So, on this Greek vacation she had overdone the combination of retsina, Moscofilero white wine, and the shockingly sweet liqueur called mastika. But it was a vacation, for Christ’s sake! Wasn’t she entitled to let her hair down a bit? She ran her hand over the stubble on her head which had dried into a collection of scratchy spikes.
She edged away from the bench, refusing to look back at the big man with his eight-legged pet and walked to the parapet separating the promenade from the beach below. The sugary-white sand glistened in the blinding sunlight that stabbed into Cleo’s bruised brain. The indigo wavelets licked at the beach margin scattered with shells. The beach was surprisingly empty: no tourists on tatty towels; no coolers, umbrellas, or kids. And no signs of their impromptu party that started last night when Cleo, Mick, Iris, and a couple of Dutch boys whose names she could not remember had spread their blankets in the balmy Mediterranean night on the shore of Syros.
Had they simply abandoned her and walked back to the hotel? But why? Try as she might, Cleo could not remember anything out of the ordinary except the retsina whose piney taste seemed to take up permanent residence in her parched mouth. And why was she soaked? It felt like sometime in the night she had walked into the Aegean fully clothed. Skinny-dipping was one thing, but swimming in your jeans in the midnight sea? And yet, a vague memory, like a disintegrating dream, nibbled at the edges of her mind with images of inky waves, bathwater-warm, embracing her as she swam toward…what?
Cleo squinted into the glare, expecting to see the tawny silhouettes of the smaller Cycladic islands surrounding Syros, but the blue immensity appeared to be empty. Not quite true – there was some vague vertical protrusion on the horizon, shimmering in the sunlight, but the hangover headache suddenly bore into Cleo’s temples with such brutal intensity that she gasped and folded down onto the pavement. She kept her eyes shut for a moment and then swiveled away from the sea, subconsciously noting that her dark glasses were apparently gone together with her backpack. At least her credit cards were back at the hotel – if she could make it. Without dark glasses, the flaming July sun in Greece would burn out her blue British eyes and shrivel her damp British brain. Was it what was happening to her? Was she hallucinating giant spiders as a result of a sunstroke?
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Born in Ukraine and currently residing in California, Elana Gomel is an academic, an award-winning writer, and a professional nomad. She is well-known for her work on speculative fiction and narrative theory, represented by her academic books, which Beyond the Golden Rule, Bloodscripts, and The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy. Twelve years ago she published her first fantasy novel and has never looked back. She is the author of more than a hundred short stories, two collections, several novellas, and seven novels. She writes dark fantasy, dark SF, fairy tales, and hard-to classify dreamlike stories, some of them connected to her roots in the former USSR. Her stories won several awards, and “Mine Seven” was featured in the Best of Horror 13 edited by Ellen Datlow. Her latest fiction publications are the dark fairy tale Nightwood (Silver Award in the Bookfest 2023 competition) and Girl of Light, an alternative history of the USSR with monsters. Many of her stories and novels have mythological and folkloric overtones, inspired by her travels and her academic research. Having lived in several countries including Israel, Italy, the UK, and Hong Kong, she now resides in the magical – and sinister – redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains with her husband.
Amazon Author Profile: https://amzn.to/3z5FHeU
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Release Date: July 17, 2024
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