the Tides of Niem
A city and its shadow. A blood lord and a prophet. Wakefulness and sleep.
TAI KASR refuses to let his mouth go black. Growing up in Lower Niem, he watches as countless Niemish people fall prey to the Black Sap -- a drug that lets the user feel the emotions of those around them. They become addicted to the lives of others as their mouths darken, losing their sense of self entirely. But when Kasr finally joins the exerter policing force as an officer, he is ordered to go undercover among the crime rings. With dread, he ingests his first nugget of Sap...
MEI'RIN, though an orphan of Upper Niem, was raised below by the great blood lord of the crime rings, peddler of the Black Sap -- Iksandari, the Sleepless. Mei'rin has spent his life reaching for the respect of Iksandari. When the blood lord orders him to kill, he does. When he commands Mei'rin to join the exerter force as a mole, he complies. But when Mei'rin learns of Iksandari's ruthless plan to expand his criminal empire and tear Niem apart, he must decide where his allegiances lie.
The Tides of Niem is a story about two men struggling to define themselves in a city that attempts to bend them into form. It is their struggle between the self and others, duty and love, order and chaos, wakefulness and sleep.
Opening Epistle from The Tides of Niem
Niemodijan, my love, is a city not unlike a lucid dreamer – both asleep and awake at once.
The people of Niemodijan (Niem as they call it), pride themselves on the visage of their city. It rises in towers of burnt red and sandy blockwork, cross-hatched by perfect black lines of mortar. Deep green cedars and cypresses provide complementary color to the city walls. Impossibly long bridges span buildings, so high that walking upon most any of them allows one to glimpse the azure sea to the east. Olive-skinned city-dwellers trek from store to school, from work to home.
That Niem sleeps.
Below them, so low that bridges become threads in the sky, lies a Niem awake. It is a Niem that churns and broils, spits and coughs and effervesces. It is rust brown people with black mouths and walls that drip with viscous darkness. It is the acid-fueled body that continues to burn and pulse even when the mind shuts off.
It is the Foot that allows Niem to walk. It is the wakefulness that allows Niem to sleep.
Most, naturally, hate the Foot of Niem, with its grime and its filth and its danger. Most hate it, but all depend upon it still. What is the mind without a body to carry it?
Niemodijan is a city complete. I do wish to show it to you one day, my love.
The Tides of Niem is a 95,000 word young/new adult, epic fantasy, crime thriller novel.
Interested in acquiring this project?
Email — hadrian.pollard@gmail.com
With the subject line — “The Tides of Niem”