ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Deborah Makarios was raised in the space between worlds and maintains an eccentric orbit.

She found her niche at the age of six when in short succession she read The B.F.G., her first Agatha Christie (Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?) and encountered her first P.G. Wodehouse (Something Fresh – saying “Heh! Mer!” is enough to make her laugh, decades later). Her personal motto is Tolle Et Lege – pick it up and read it – regardless of whether “it” is a Bible, a book or a jar of home-made marmalade.

She keeps her Luddite tendencies under sufficient control to allow for regular blog posts, but nothing can quash her fondness for old technologies. Her favourite phrases are “piston-filling fountain pen” and “annotated typescript.”

Her mission is to write books, plays and blog posts like cups of tea: warm, heartening and restorative. She believes in happy endings, the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and always having a clean handkerchief. It is, however, against her religious principles to believe in “normal.”

She lives among the largely unsuspecting populace of New Zealand with only two cats, and her brilliant, albeit marginally less eccentric, husband.

She can be found online at deborah.makarios.nz or Mastodon.

Publisher: Oi Makarioi (March 21, 2024) Length: 358 pages Formats: ebook

Amiant Soul is a lovely treasure of a story. I went into it blind, as I did with Deborah's previous two novels, and each chapter brims with new cultures, races, customs, and adventures. While not as outwardly humorous as The Wound of Words, Amiant Soul cuts into deeper themes of found family, community, loyalty, exploration, and finding one's true self in an ever-expanding world.

The story is told from a first-person narrative about a man who doesn't know his real name, but others in his small village call him Ghost due to his large, looming presence and uniquely grey skin. He is unlike anyone else the villagers have seen, and is constantly bullied for it. His only friends are a woodland creature and an old woman who lets him live in a lean-to connected to her house. He works as a bouncer in the village tavern but is a kind and gentle soul at heart. All he knows about his past is that someone brought him to this village when he was young, and no one else has ever seen another person of his race.

One day, a poisoned man stumbles into the village, and while most of the villagers shun the man out of fear, Ghost takes a different approach. Because of this one decision, it launches Ghost into a far-reaching journey with legendary companions where the very fate of the kingdom is at stake.

While this isn't a long book, it packs various cultures, races, traditions, and magical abilities into every chapter. Ghost serves as an excellent proxy for the reader, as we discover this incredible, beautiful, and dangerous world through his eyes. The supporting characters are rich and interesting, and some of the resolution is left up to the reader's interpretation, which I particularly enjoyed.

Makarios is an underrated author. Her books are under a Creative Commons license, so she doesn't sell them through Amazon and they're a bit more difficult to seek out. I lucked into drawing her first novel, The Wound of Words while judging SPFBO a few years back, and have been a fan of all her work ever since. Amiant Soul further cements her as one of the more under-appreciated authors in the self-published fantasy world, and I encourage you to give her books a try. They're heartfelt, creative, poignant, exciting, and tons of fun.