Welcome to author Annabelle Jay, who’s stopped by today to celebrate the release of Luminosity, the fifth and final book in her Young Adult Fantasy series The Sun Dragon, from Harmony Ink Press.
The Sun Dragon Series Mansion: More than Just a Setting
The Sun Dragon Series, my young adult fantasy series published with Harmony Ink, is unique in that every book follows the next generation of wizards, dragons, demons, and the many other characters that comprise its complex world. However, the characters are not the only things that develop as the years go on; the settings, including the Mansion—the home and training ground of all of the wizards who work with the wizarding council—change as well.
In The Sun Dragon, the first book in the series, Allanah is brought to the Mansion after King Roland reappears and awakens a dragon army among the human population, including her best friend. Here is the moment in The Sun Dragon when she sees the Mansion for the first time:
The minute we crossed the threshold between the stable and the dead lawn, the same bright blue light that had appeared in the garage started at our feet and moved across the field, turning everything it touched into a vibrant garden. Flowers that had wilted and curved like dried reeds suddenly straightened and stretched toward the sun; grass that had turned lunch-bag brown now turned emerald green, and the light reflected off its waxy surface like it would a shimmering lake. The house itself, previously something out of a haunted hayride, became a mansion adorned with line windows, gold railings, and towers.
Jason, Allanah’s crush and the wizard who brings her to the Mansion, explains the wizards’ system of categorization:
“…There are five levels: Level Ones have barely perceptible magic, a surprisingly larhe number within our population, including amateur fortune-tellers, magicians, etc. At Level Two you can be inducted into the Council’s large group of pages, who track potential wizards, run magical errands, and complete any tasks that require at least a little bit of training in white magic. Level Threes can join the Council Guard; Level Fours can become ambassadors, or any other high-level position. Only Level Fives, however, can become Council members. Not everyone works for the Council, of course. It’s just an easy way of classifying each person’s magical potential.”
By Luminisity, the fifth and final book of the series, the “Mansion” is a mansion in name only. Instead of one building, the Mansion has developed into a set of skyscrapers removed from the normal world by its place on a floating island. Every wizarding level has its own building, from the less powerful Level Twos to the most powerful Level Fives.
However, with progress comes a desire to cling to traditions, and the same holds true for the Mansion’s residents. By this time there are two parties in the wizarding world that split in the early 2100s—the Mods and the Trads. The Mods want to keep the Mansion updated with the latest technology, while the Trads want to take the Mansion back to its more traditional roots. These parties also exist in the human world, where the United States is split into areas run by these parties.
The Mansion is not the only aspect of the Sun Dragon Series world that has changed over the course of the five books in the series; every setting, from the creation of a floating dragon island to the advancements in the human cities, has changed too.
In a way, the settings are characters in these books, and though the people who live in them are replaced by the next generation, places like the Mansion are the threads that hold the books together.
The settings and a whole lot of dragons, of course!
About the Book
In the final book of The Sun Dragon series, teenager Luke is keeping a big secret: on the inside, she’s really a girl. However, after she’s attacked by an incubus who might be her father, Luke learns of the powers that come with such a lineage, and her life gets even more complicated. As the last Artist in the universe, she must work with the wizard Council and the dragon clan leaders to defeat the evil incubi before they consume the entire world, all while struggling to dump her accidental girlfriend, managing her love for an Igreefee royal who sees her as a friend, and deciding whether it’s time to transition into the girl she knows she is.
An epic finish to the journey started with Allanah’s first Sun Dragon, Luminosity will bring all of your favorite dragons, wizards, sorceresses, and birds together for one last battle that will decide the fate of them all.
Buy the Book: Dreamspinner Press || Harmony Ink Press || Amazon || Barnes & Noble || iBooks || Kobo
About the Author
Annabelle Jay writes young adult LGBT novels. She loves dragons, witches, and magic, but also writes realistic fiction too. Annabelle is the author of several novels, including The Knight Perry, Caron High News, and The Sun Dragon Series. If there’s one thing author Annabelle Jay believes with all her heart, it’s that there is no such thing as too many dragons in a book. As fantasy writer with few other hobbies—does being bribed to run with her partner or dancing awkwardly in the kitchen count?—she spends every day following her imagination wherever it leads her.
A hippie born in the wrong decade, Annabelle has a peace sign tattoo and a penchant for hugging trees. Occasionally she takes breaks from her novels to play with her pets: Jon Snow, the albino rabbit who is constantly trying to escape; Stevie, the crested gecko that climbs glass with the hairs on its toes; and Luigi, the green tree python that lives at the foot of her bed despite her best efforts to talk her partner out of the idea. During her day job as a professor of English, Annabelle is often assumed to be a fellow student playing a prank on the class—that is, until she hands out the syllabus. When people stop mistaking her for a recent high school graduate, she will probably be very sad.
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