The traitor’s Trap
Author
Brendan Murphy
Author Bio
Brendan Murphy has scribbled something down every day since he was nine years old. After reading medicine in London and psychiatry in Manchester, he moved to Australia in 1999. He is an Associate Professor at Monash University, writes widely on youth mental health, has published a book on the history of football (From Sheffield with Love, 2007), and is a columnist for Aontacht Magazine. He is contracted to Assent Publishing for his six-book Celtic fantasy series, Sebastian and the Hibernauts. The first adventure, Beyond the Gloaming, was published in 2014. The sequel, The Traitor’s Trap, was released in November 2015. He lives with his wife, Katrina, and their children, Sebastian and Violette, in a sprawling property built for the composer, Dorian Le Gallienne. They share their garden with a mob of kangaroos, a wombat, two possums, any number of creepy crawlies, and some very feisty kookaburras.
As a child, I immersed myself in a magical land of stories. As I grew older and reality crumbled the edifices of my fantastical world, I longed to recreate the rare and noble alchemy compressed between the covers of a children’s book. My adult heart had added requirements: these would be books for adults and children, layered with themes and symbols, high and low.
With a nod to the rip-roaring adventures I had loved as a boy, I set about writing the Sebastian and the Hibernauts series. Sebastian is a boy on the cusp of adolescence, lonely and confused, dazzled by life’s cruelties. Thrust into a Celtic mythological landscape, his journey into adulthood begins. The stories are brimful of ghosts and gobbleratches, hunkypunks and barguest, leprechauns and cluricaun, mechanical fireworks and magic shillelaghs, quizzing glasses and night rainbows. There’s a dastardly whodunit to keep you on your toes, several secret romances nestled amongst the pages, and skullduggery, treachery and twists and turns galore. Welcome to Hibercadia. Let the wonderment begin!
Description
It’s tough being a thirteen-year old schoolboy, especially when you’re an accident-prone coward and the big brother who stuck up for you is dead. Oh, and you’ve been thrust into a magical realm you’re expected to save single-handedly. Sebastian Duffy has an awful lot of skills to learn in a hurry if he is to defeat Phobitor by stealing the Spear of Lugh from the peace-loving Tuath. He’s been given some help of course–a mercurial sorceress, an orphaned druidess, a taciturn warrior, a snuff-sniffing leprechaun and a lovelorn poet– an outfit known as the Hibernauts, but can he really overcome a psychopathic warmongering god when half the realm is bent on his destruction? If he is to have the remotest chance he will have to outsmart hordes of aiia, cluricaun, brigands, woodwose, undead warriors, speckled bats, spies, hunkypunks, traitors, skeletons, gobbleratches and battle-swine first. And are those Tuath really so peaceable? If only he could find his courage.
The Traitor’s Trap is the second installment in the Sebastian and the Hibernauts series, the fast-paced, endlessly twisting adventure saga set in Hibercadia, a Celtic dreamworld brimful of quizzing glasses and magic shillelaghs, mechanical fireworks and night rainbows, fantastical creatures and outrageous skullduggery, tragedy and joy.
As a child, I immersed myself in a magical land of stories. As I grew older and reality crumbled the edifices of my fantastical world, I longed to recreate the rare and noble alchemy compressed between the covers of a children’s book. My adult heart had added requirements: these would be books for adults and children, layered with themes and symbols, high and low.
With a nod to the rip-roaring adventures I had loved as a boy, I set about writing the Sebastian and the Hibernauts series. Sebastian is a boy on the cusp of adolescence, lonely and confused, dazzled by life’s cruelties. Thrust into a Celtic mythological landscape, his journey into adulthood begins. The stories are brimful of ghosts and gobbleratches, hunkypunks and barguest, leprechauns and cluricaun, mechanical fireworks and magic shillelaghs, quizzing glasses and night rainbows. There’s a dastardly whodunit to keep you on your toes, several secret romances nestled amongst the pages, and skullduggery, treachery and twists and turns galore. Welcome to Hibercadia. Let the wonderment begin!
Book excerpt
They descended into the hubbub. Tuathans swarmed the thoroughfares, some in shimmering robes, others in simple garments. Many appeared to be heading home, eager to make the most of the big day ahead. Sebastian was sure they would be spotted, not least on account of Porrig and Quilliog’s shortness, yet no one paid them the slightest bit of notice, except to apologise when they bumped into them. Crazily happy to be there, his eyes darted joyously about the festooned streets. Ribbons of tinsel flew of their own accord, vying for attention with the countless floating baubles that glowed different colours, expanding and contracting like bubbles. Elsewhere, paper lanterns drifted about, folding into different shapes at will, first one was a dragon, then it was a ship, now it was a castle. Adults cheered and children squealed as minstrels jostled them, tumbling and juggling, and musicians wove through the crowds playing ethereal music on instruments Sebastian had never seen before, bell cymbals and fairy fifes, bodhrán and hand-harps. He was enthralled to see stately white stags drawing slowly progressing carriages, their happy occupants leaning out to greet strangers and wave hats.
Ladies in fineries rode upon fallow deer with reticulated bridles of silver, while children sat upon prickets and fawns. Hawkers sold red ale from huge barrels off the back of carts drawn by wooden-yoked oxen and street vendors bawled out their wares. Some sold warblers—blackcaps and chiffchaffs—that trilled exquisitely as they perched tamely or flew above the crowds, always returning to their stall, others sold the rarest herbs, virtually unobtainable in Hibercadia—wintersweet and maidenhair, featherfoil and foxtail—and the other Hibernauts had to peel Roisin from the stalls. Sebastian was so enthralled by all that he saw that he hardly noticed his littlest fingers beginning to pulsate.
