Book Title: Asher and the Prince: The Apex Blade
Author: Evan J. Corbin
Publisher: Atonement Book, LLC
Cover Artist: The Book Cover Whisperer: OpenBookDesign.biz
Release Date: October 28, 2024
Tense/POV: Past/third person
Genres: MM Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Young Adult
Tropes: Enemies to lovers
Themes: Unintended consequences for emergent technologies, coming out
Heat Rating: 2 flames
Length: 79,000 words/ 332 pages
It is the first book of a series. It does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
Asher and the Prince: The Apex Blade is a thrilling blend of medieval fantasy, LGBTQ romance, and science fiction, where a forgotten past may be the key to salvation.
Blurb
Asher Snow is no ordinary peasant. Seventeen-year-old Asher’s sharp mind and selfless devotion to others have always set him apart in a kingdom where survival hinges on luck and cunning. When he crosses paths with a powerful witch, Asher seizes the chance to make a wish—only to be dismayed by the witch’s condition that it be a selfish wish. But to avert a looming war, Asher must play a dangerous game.
Feigning love for the kingdom’s handsome prince, Asher persuades the witch to grant his seemingly selfish desire for the prince’s love, believing it to be the key to preventing a war. But as he weaves his web of deceit, Asher is entangled in a perilous journey where power, betrayal, and forbidden love collide. As political tensions rise and the threat of war looms on the horizon, Asher must decide if his risks will lead to his salvation—or his undoing.
Asher and the Prince: The Apex Blade is a thrilling blend of medieval fantasy, LGBTQ romance, and science fiction, where a forgotten past may be the key to salvation. Will Asher’s daring gambit secure his future—or set in motion a fate darker than he ever imagined?
Without more wood than he happened to pick up along the trail that day, the fire wouldn’t last the night. Asher retreated from the prince’s side, dug into his pocket, and unfolded a small knife. He sifted through chunks of splintered oak from the kindling in his bag to find a suitable lump of wood. Absentmindedly, he sat on a stone and started to whittle, shucking off wood shavings. Light from the fire danced across the cut wood, revealing layers untarnished by nature’s severity.
The fire’s light dimmed as Hunter crossed by the flame to sit beside him. “She’s right, you know.”
“Who?” Asher asked, not taking his eyes off the wood in his hand.
Hunter looked toward the sky. “Gertrude. I’ve never known love.”
“Given the circumstances, I assume you’re relieved of the obligation to find it with her.”
“So it seems,” Hunter said, chuckling. “I mean, it terrifies me—the idea that an emotion could be so strong, corrupting a person to become so selfish.”
“I see love as selfless. It’s about caring about someone else so much that you’re willing to sacrifice for them.”
“Well, yes,” Hunter said. “But what makes love between two people so important that they forsake their duties to society?”
“Love doesn’t always demand that,” Asher said as he accidentally cut a gash too deep in the wood. “I think Gertrude and Ruth just ran out of options. I suspect they would have stayed in Bishop Falls if there was a way to balance their obligations with their love.”
Hunter was silent, and the crackling fire was the only sound between them. “But what if you get hurt? What if it all ends in despair?”
“That’s the risk,” Asher admitted, “but it’s also what makes love profound enough to be in the bards’ refrains and all the poems. It’s the courage to be vulnerable, to open yourself to the possibility of pain for the chance of experiencing it. Love can hurt, but it also heals. It’s a force that drives us to be better—to ourselves and each other.”
Hunter’s gaze shifted from the fire to Asher, a softness in his eyes. “And you believe it’s worth it?”
“It has to be,” Asher said. “I haven’t experienced it either, but I want to. Otherwise, there’s no meaning in life—no cause to fight for.”
Hunter let out a long breath. “What are you making?”
“Just whittling. A hobby, I guess. I used to make animals. Sheep. Horses.”
“I did the same thing when I was younger. I probably made an army of knights on their horses,” Hunter said, waving his arm across an imaginary battlefield.
Asher chuckled at the thought of the prince, high in his castle, carving under the same light of some shared moon from their past. “I think I like making something out of nothing.”
“Exactly,” Hunter said. “I would never start with anything in mind. I’d examine the wood first and let it guide me—telling me what it should become.”
Asher handed the wood and the knife to the prince. “I thought I’d carve a gnome, but it looks a bit more like a toad. What do you think it should be?”
Hunter stroked his thumb along the freshly cut grain and hummed as he squinted. “I’d reason that it could be a most valiant knight.”
“Does the wood always want to be a knight, or is that just the only thing you know how to carve?”
“Maybe a whittle of both,” Hunter said, his eyes twinkling with a wry smile.
Asher groaned and shook his head. “I had no idea that you were so punny. Maybe you should branch out and carve something yew.”
As their laughter echoed around the fire, Asher was lost in thought, contemplating the prince’s true shape. He wondered if Hunter, like the wood he carved, bore a rough exterior, masking a tender soul beneath layers of weathered bark. Or perhaps he was repeating his mistake by presuming to force the shape into his own desires. He cautioned himself to proceed with deliberation, to avoid letting his desire to create his vision misguide him, sculpting not the knight he envisioned but yet another toad.
Evan is a member of the LGBTQ community who fancies himself as a playboy socialite, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between work and lucid moments of sobriety, he writes a little. His debut novel is a light-hearted work that still manages to confront religious hypocrisy and contemporary LGBTQ struggles to balance their loss of culture with new-found civil rights.
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