Cover Image by Sanna Lander
The long-awaited prequel to Excalibur Reborn from best-selling author Nigel Davies-Williams.
Esmeralda is the progeny of a very special bloodline; a bloodline of Witches, Wizards and Wu-Shi. Even her birth is steeped in mystery, when her mother finds out the mysterious Chinese doctor and French midwife present at her birth don’t even exist. Months later a mysterious package arrives from China containing the ‘Dragon Talisman’ with a note explaining how unique a person Esmeralda is going to be.
Living on an isolated farm in Nouvelle Aquitaine, France, Esmeralda is eleven when she is given the contents of the package, which until then her mother has hidden from her. Her life alters unimaginably, and she is thrown, full on, into a life as a Chinese witch – a Wu-Shi.
Trouble looms when the evil and malicious White Bones Queen seeks Esmeralda out, to complete the Sorcerers Supernatural Trinity; something which will make her immortal.
Esmeralda establishes she is from a long line of evil herself. Can she take on the fight within and conquer her demons and her enemies at the same time.
The book whisks you off to China, then back to the heart of France and into the Catacombs of Paris, eventually leading on a trail to the holiest of shrines in North Wales.
Treachery and traitorous events are ready to take you at every turn.
What inspired me to write the book:
I live just a mile or so away from the village of Flint Mountain, a small village between Flint and my home at Northop in Flintshire. Flint Mountain has a very magical location called ‘Pwll-Yr-Wrach’ aka, The Witch’s Pool. Here abound many supernatural stories connected to the eerie and isolated location, on a narrow and windy lane.
Let me tell you more about this rather insignificant looking murky piece of water at Flint Mountain known as Pwll-y-Wrach - The Witches’ Pool (sometimes Pwll Y Wrach (The Witches Pool)), which will always be locally associated with sorcery and enchantment.
My dad grew up in and around Flint Mountain, living with his grandparents John and Sarah-Jane Williams (nee Owens) at their tiny cottage on Pentre Hill (‘the back hill’) but for generations prior to that the family lived at Waen-Y-Balls, a location just along from there and from there many tales did come... read the blog I wrote about this below...
Reviews
The Blenheim Boys
‘The devotion and gallantry… are beyond all praise. The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava is eclipsed in brightness by these almost daily deeds of fame.’
Winston Churchill on the Blenheim Crews - Prime Minister’s Personal Minute, M.852/1, 30 August 1941
