Younger Gods 1: The Younger Gods (26 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
have been an avid reader of world folklore and mythology for my whole life, and enjoy sharing that passion. I always recommend that fans of fantasy, be it urban, epic, or anything in between, respectfully and lovingly engage with world religious texts and folkloric traditions, to see these influences in their historical and cultural contexts. Without these works and these traditions, this book would not exist.

In
The Younger Gods
, I used my experiences and training as a folklorist to draw upon world religions, mythologies, and more. I have taken artistic license in several places to make the world my own, creating a distinct cosmology and system of magic by synthesizing multiple sources and narrative threads. It is my intent to do so with all due respect to the people whose cultures have figured in or inspired my work.

The character of Jacob Greene has been with me for many years, and his story has evolved across a half-dozen tellings. But he came properly alive for the first time in a role-playing game campaign run by Lothair Biederman, with fellow players Blair Burns, Paul Friebus, Carl Short, Barry Welling, Stephen Mar, Ryan Conner, and Meg White. The Jacob Greene of
The Younger Gods
is not the Jacob of that game, but I wouldn’t have written this book without those many hours of laughter, drama, and shared storytelling.

A big high five to my beta readers Gary Kloster, Beth Cato, Anaea Lay, Effie Seiberg, and Alyc Helms for their detailed notes, and big thanks to Jose Iriarte, Traci Castleberry, Darusha Wehm, Leena Likitalo, Elizabeth Shack, Kate Heartfield, Laurie Tom, and Luc Reid for their comments.

My eternal gratitude to my fiancée, Meg White, for endless hours of talking, reading, and pondering with me to make the world work, from the cosmogony down to the characterization. This was a tough one, and without you, I might have given up on the book.

Special thanks to Emily Dare for the research consultation on Enochian. Any errors in the use of that language are mine, not hers. Because really, it’s my own damned fault for using a language with only the scantest of dictionaries in existence and I ended up having to invent vocabulary.

Thanks to Angry Robot and Osprey Publishing for giving me the chance to be a New Yorker again, even for a short while. This book is, among many other things, my love letter to the five boroughs that taught me what a city can be.

Huge thanks to my editor, Adam Wilson, for coming with me on the journey to a very different kind of urban fantasy, for excellent notes on how to make the world come together, and for his patience. Props to behind-the-scenes man Trey Bidinger for all of his assistance in making everything go.

Props to my attentive copy editor Crystal Velasquez, and cover designer Damon for the impressive packaging.

Thanks again and again to my agent, Sara Megibow, for embracing the Pitchapalooza approach and helping me bring my best ideas to the fore. Ever onward!

And as always, thanks to you, my readers, for coming with me on the journey.

Michael R. Underwood

Baltimore, Maryland

August 2014

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
ichael R. Underwood is the author of the Ree Reyes urban fantasies
Geekomancy
,
Celebromancy
,
Attack the Geek
, and the weird-superhero novel
Shield and Crocus
. By day, he’s the North American sales and marketing manager for Angry Robot Books. Underwood grew up devouring stories in all forms, from comics to video games, tabletop RPGs, movies, and books. Always books.

Underwood lives in Baltimore with his fiancée, an ever-growing library, and a super-team of dinosaur figurines and stuffed animals. In his rapidly vanishing free time, he studies historical martial arts and makes pizzas from scratch.

THE GEEKOMANCY SERIES

Geekomancy

Celebromancy

Attack the Geek

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Michael R. Underwood

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First Pocket Star Books eBook edition October 2014

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Interior design by Meryll Rae Preposi

Cover design by Damon

Cover art by Bigstock

ISBN 978-1-4767-5779-7