Of alternate histories and precious hopes

Reconciling the current state of our world with our heroine’s mission of saving hers. Or not.

We see images of ecological destruction everywhere these days: oil slicks, plastic trash floating in the oceans, deforestation, natural water ways encased in concrete, air pollution (be it smog or “fine dust”).

There are stories of hope but there are already climate refugees and Pacific islands beginning to disappear under rising waters due to melting ice. Our earth grows hotter and our weather events are more extreme.

Clearly, our heroine from 1814 did not succeed in saving us from this worldwide catastrophe.

So why the heck should you read this book?

Because of the sea dragons?

No, not these sea dragons.

Think of this as an alternate history, a parallel universe, where our heroine could conceivably still have a chance to change humanity’s course into something more sustainable, something where humanity tended instead of abused.

I don’t know if we are past the point of no return (plenty of climate scientists think so, yay), but I do know the Industrial age is when we started pumping more pollutants into our atmosphere, when what we made became more important than the people making it or who consumed it. Which, you know, is around about the time of our story, 1814.

Realistically, machinery was already well underway by about 50 or so years, but the Luddites, those who broke machines to protest for better wages, were active from 1811-1816.

Imagine then, what the world might have been like if industrial magnates had not been quite so … grasping?

Perhaps the only way to change Humanity’s ways is through magic, and we will see that play out in book three of the Môrdreigiau Chronicles. (That surely isn’t a spoiler. I don’t know exactly how this will be resolved yet myself. I’ve got the missteps figured out. Because of course.)

Obviously.

In the meantime, our heroine needs to assemble those who will help her and find the magical tools with which they will enspell and thus transform the world.

Even though the solution is magical, otherworldly, what is at the core of this series is a heart for change, for saving the world.

That seems like a big promise, which I am not sure I can deliver and yet…

You in? How do you feel about the state of the world? How are you tackling those feelings?