Today I have the honor of hosting the cover reveal for Fortune’s Fool, the debut novel by independently published author Angela Boord. Fortune’s Fool is a Renaissance inspired, epic, historical, black powder, and romance fantasy. It’s the first book of the Eterean Empire series and releases June 25, 2019 on Kindle and later in paperback.
About The Book
A secret affair. A disfiguring punishment. A burning need for revenge.
Kyrra d’Aliente has a bad reputation and an arm made of metal.
Cast out of the safe and luxurious world of silk to which she was born, played as a pawn in a game of feuding Houses, Kyrra navigates a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies, and smugglers while disguising herself as a man.
War destroyed her family and the man she loved. Vengeance is within her grasp.
But is she willing to pay its price?
Cover Art: John Anthony Di Giovanni; Cover Design: Shawn T. King
“My right arm is made of metal.
A man named Arsenault made it for me, but he never told me its secrets. He didn’t have time. He gave me the arm and sent me to safety, then he rode off to die.
My arm shines like silver and withstands all weather and all blows, but it isn’t a dead thing. No leather straps attach it to my stump, no belts or buckles of any kind. The metal grows right into my flesh. From the sculpted whorls of my metal fingerprints to the dimple of my metal elbow, it might be the arm with which I was born.
Except that it’s not.
That arm lies rotting in a cedar casket in the ground beneath a cork tree, an arm of meat, skin and blood like any other woman’s.
Not that anyone can tell I’m a woman. I dress like a man and work as a gavaro, wielding my sword for coin. People know me as Kyris. But the name I was born with is Kyrra. Kyrra d’Aliente, only child of Pallo, the Householder of House Aliente.
My father is dead now, and the name Aliente is no longer my own. I am forbidden to use it, upon pain of execution. I may be the last Aliente alive, but I can’t even say so.
The men beside whom I fight don’t usually want to know House names anyway. Every gavaro tells his own lies of how he came to this mercenary life. After five years of saying it, I have almost come to believe that my name is Kyris di Nada, and that I sprang full-grown, metal-armed, from the rocky brow ridge of the Irondels.
Kyris No-Name. Of Nothing, Nowhere.
The name with which I was born caused a war. Ask anyone in the city of Liera and they’ll tell you, Kyrra d’Aliente did it. Cutting off her arm wasn’t enough. They know whom to blame for the crumbling walls of their once-elegant buildings, the deep pits left by cannonballs in the stone canal moorings. The tumbled brickwork still clogs the canals maintained by lesser Houses, who can’t afford to dredge them out.
As if I might have been somehow more than incidental in the great games of the Houses. The Prinze controlled an entire fleet and a quarter of the coastline of the Eterean peninsula. Of what consequence was my arm to them? They cast it aside and trod over my family the way their horses trampled our land in battle.
I wasn’t there for the battles. Arsenault asked me to go north to Rojornick, out of Eterea entirely, and I did. Some would call me a coward for honoring that promise. Maybe they’re right.
But now I’ve come home, and answers are what I seek. About the five years that have passed since Geoffre di Prinze staged his first raid on my father’s land. About where Arsenault might be, if he’s not dead and buried. Information has become scarcer and more precious even than a black-market gun, snatched for a small fortune from under the omnipresent eyes of the Prinze.
Every new fact is like a shining flake of gold glittering in the waters of a stream. I sift through them, examining each with care. Then I tuck them away along with all my other secrets. My sex. My name. My arm.
Like a pilgrim, I come to Liera seeking truth.”
About The Author
Angela Boord published a handful of fantasy short stories in the early 2000s, then had a bunch of kids and took a long break from writing. She lives in northwestern Mississippi with her husband and their nine kids, plus two dogs, a cat named Mouse, and varying numbers of chickens. She writes most of her stories sitting at the kitchen table, and is hard at work on more books and stories set in the Eterean Empire.
You can follow Angela on Twitter at @Angelaboord
Fortune’s Fool is available for pre-order now on Amazon:
You can also find it on Goodreads:
Find the Cover Artist and Cover Designer at the links below:
Cover Artist: John Anthony Di Giovanni
Twitter: @ja_dig
Webpage: https://www.jadillustrated.com/
Cover Designer: Shawn T. King
Twitter: @stk_kreations
Webpage: http://www.stkkreations.com/
Off The TBR 
Hopefully all 9 kids will grow up to be readers!
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Great cover reveal! Looks like an amazing book too. I’m looking forward to reading it.
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Awesome cover reveal! I’ll have to check this out!
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Thanks! I’m excited to read it too.
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Awesome cover, especially for an indie author😁
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It really is good isn’t it
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Okay wow, I need this in my life RIGHT. NOW. Glad to hear the release date is so close!
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She’s also entered it in SPFBO.
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I’m pretty dang excited to read this one!
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Me too!
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Is it on your SPFBO list?
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It is! But I actually was curious about it before SFPBO, so I’m stoked to be able to read it thanks to the contest!
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