Markless
Book One of What He Carried
Soren Vale is twenty, Markless, and tired.
In the Aldermark, every child is born with a fragment of magic that blooms into a Mark on their body by age seven. Soren’s never came. The villagers of Hollowmere decided early what that meant — and they have been telling him, patiently, for twenty years.
He has been the family disappointment standing in the long shadow of his Third Mark prodigy little sister. He has been small, and quiet, and good. He has worked.
A contract takes him east. It is supposed to be a fortnight’s hard labor for honest pay. It will not be.
What waits for him on the road is something the founders of the Aldermark spent centuries trying to bury. The boy the village declared no one is about to discover that the village was wrong — about him, and about the world.
About
August Marsh writes literary fantasy about inheritance, belonging, and the stories institutions tell about people.
Markless is his first novel and the opening volume of the planned five-book series What He Carried. Book two is in progress.
He publishes under a pen name. The books are meant to supply the rest.
Contact
Review copies available on request.