{"id":1004,"date":"2025-09-20T11:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T10:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2025-09-20T11:40:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T10:40:51","slug":"novic-by-eugen-bacon-blog-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/?p=1004","title":{"rendered":"NOVIC by Eugen Bacon Blog Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Discover the haunting origins of an immortal soul in\u00a0Novic<\/em>, a mesmerizing novelette<\/a> by Eugen Bacon that serves as the “story-before-the-story” of the enigmatic Sayneth priest introduced in her acclaimed debut novel,\u00a0Claiming T-Mo<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She\u2019s a Solstice, British Fantasy and Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Award, Ignyte and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was also announced in the honor list for “doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction.” Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a “sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work.” Visit her at eugenbacon.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NOVIC Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been hearing about Eugen Bacon’s writing for quite some time as she’s picked up award after award. Even so, I was not quite prepared to be so swept up into Novic. It’s actually a prequel to Bacon’s debut “Claiming T-Mo” and I was immersed from the first page and saddened when it ended. I’d forgotten that it was a novelette. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t want to give too much away, but Novic is an intriguing character who’s struggling to make come to terms with both his immortality, which makes him feel inhuman and disconnected from the world, but also his connection to and need for family. Two things which on the surface would appear disparate but are intertwined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The writing is beautiful, some of the lines form into poetry or lyrics and tell another part of the story with how they’re placed on the page. It’s a work of art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you enjoy weird, if you enjoy speculative fiction, if you enjoy dark fantasy, this will be for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My copy, which was kindly provided by MeerKat Press <\/a>in return for an honest review, also included an extract from Claiming T-Mo so you can take up the rest of the story if you wish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But don’t just take my word for it, try this excerpt and see if you too find yourself immersed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EXCERPT from NOVIC by EUGEN BACON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The slow trek of a snow camel took him there. He never looked where he was going. He just went. The course through the mountains was a brace\u2014all tangled. Everything was savage about it: humping ground personified to viciousness, roaring wind unwilling to give any answers. Things crawled at him from the edge of his eye, dissolved when he looked closer. He was a wreck. He felt a wreck. Further still, the horizon ran out of time. The beast he rode on let out a gushy fart as Novic slid off the saddleback. He slapped its rump as the handler said he should, and the camel chewed cud and batted long lashes at him before it turned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He trusted it would make its own way back down to the cameleer farm he loaned it from. He\u2019d bobbed in weirdness, gently moving his body back, forth, lumbering side to side between its two humps, and the only bother he felt was not from the stiffness of its woolly fur beneath the skinny saddle but rather from the musky odor of it. There was also the sour pungency of the camel\u2019s breath, emphasized at intervals with rancid burps. In essence, it was darn good riddance to let the beast go\u2014he was done holding his breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Temple of Kripps in the Land of Praeyer at a place below zero was off a cut stone path that led up, up to the sky. A sense of doom hovered about it and he didn\u2019t think it was anything to do with the close of daylight. Novic strode on the cobblestones until he reached the imposition of a two-meter door. He hunted for a bell, and nothing remotely resembled one within his spectrum of visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the non-appearance of a doorbell, he lifted the giant steel knocker that seemed there for a reason, and rapped the tall, thick wood engraved with death masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whose faces? He couldn\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman opened the grand entrance and stood framed under its arc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi, I\u2019m Brad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He presumed she was the priestess the cameleer had talked about. \u201cBrad,\u201d he said. \u201cAs in Bradelia? Bradossa?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust Brad, thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked at him long and hard with the deep, searching eyes of a door-to-door salesperson convincing one to trust them, and succeeding. She wore an even, handsome face\u2014he could almost call it a welcoming square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She moved aside to let him into the temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get many of you out here banging at these gates,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He followed her into dim light, and her flat wooden shoes made a god-awful racket on the stone floor. He\u2019d expected a robed sage, but here she was dressed in hot pants and a tank top. He noticed how her body folded into itself, contours and ravines of skin after skin. Her ash-speckled head was braided in two long-tailed cornrows, and a pearl drop dangled down her nostril instead of her earlobe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She halted, tinkered with a lantern as he waited. She turned, and led him by lamplight along the limestone tiles of a long, thin corridor three people wide. Hand-painted portraits of deities\u2014the halos?\u2014lined the burnt brick walls. Brad halted without warning and he stopped himself falling into her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She fumbled with keys on a solid door and pushed into a monk\u2019s cell with feeble air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess this will do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She threw open a baby window framed in ebony wood and he welcomed the white moonshine that amplified the lamp\u2019s glow. He cast an eye about the room, swept his glance across the solemn bed and its stingy bedding. He observed the shedding sheets tongued in a headfold inside a course blanket that could well have been camel hair. A sole prayer stool stood, somewhat lost, in the room. More faces of gods or dead people carved out from the unpolished walls, and he was startled to see a long, thin death mask with an uncanny resemblance to his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bathroom at the end of the corridor was a shared one, partitioned into toilet cubicles and an open area that hosted thirteen sinks and seven shower stalls. Brad left him to it, and he stepped off his clothes, set off the hot water tap. He didn\u2019t notice the absence of steam until he stepped under the shower and let out a shriek as icy water lashed at his back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He found her in a modest kitchen, again, all stone. There was a hot pan on the stove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy did you come here?\u201d she asked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t stall by pretending she meant \u201chere\u201d as in the kitchen. He wondered how much to tell her. His power over others. The potency of his Sayneth inheritance. His immortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her eyes lit when he told her his truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTell me more over food,\u201d she said, and whipped out fresh rye bread, warm from the oven. She put him at a granite table with timber legs and six matching chairs that expected company. She sat across and cut him a thick slice of the mouthwatering loaf, lathered it with \u201cforage chutney,\u201d as she called it. \u201cPotluck,\u201d she said. \u201cI never know what I\u2019ll find in it. Once I got silver ants in the jar. They were so delicious.\u201d She glanced at him. \u201cEver eaten ants raw?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled a response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She poured him a drink from a gourd. \u201cRoot beer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took the slice and sank his teeth into it. The first chew was nutty and wild, full of the freshest herbs. He sipped the frothless beer and flames reached his throat. His eyes widened. He looked at the plate, then at the stein. His fingers seared, his throat raged. His hands, legs, his whole body felt paralyzed\u2014he couldn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something clattered at or bounced off the table and crashed to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d he thought or spoke as he fell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brad was on top of him very quickly, or in slow motion\u2014he couldn\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her touch was intimate, opening the top of his shirt so he could breathe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d his eyes said, a lone tear gliding down the side of his face. He felt the froth filling his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never let an opportunity go missing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She stroked his hair as the burning, burning, ate away his gut and he coughed out his stomach in meat, blood and bile, heave after heave, gasping for air,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as his innards<\/p>\n\n\n\n

curdled and he<\/p>\n\n\n\n

collapsed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

out of his<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Novic <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meerkat Press supplied me with a digital arc of the book in return for an honest review.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Discover the haunting origins of an immortal soul in\u00a0Novic, a mesmerizing novelette by Eugen Bacon that serves as the “story-before-the-story” of the enigmatic Sayneth priest introduced in her acclaimed debut Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,1],"tags":[520,171,524,501,525,527,526],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-sci-fi","category-uncategorized","tag-blog-tour","tag-books-2","tag-eugen-bacon","tag-meerkat-press","tag-novic","tag-novic-blog-tour","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scifiville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}