THE DARK COURT
Vyvyan Evans

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GENRE:  Science Fiction

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

A genre-blending dystopian, sci-fi mystery-thriller that will make you think about communication in a whole new way.

Five years after the Great Language Outage, lang-laws have been repealed, but world affairs have only gotten worse. The new automation agenda has resulted in a social caste system based on IQ. Manual employment is a thing of the past, and the lowest soc-ed class, the Unskills, are forced into permanent unemployment.

In a world on the brink of civil war, a deadly insomnia pandemic threatens to kill billions. Lilith King, Interpol’s most celebrated detective, is assigned to the case.

Together with a sleep specialist, Dr. Kace Westwood, Lilith must figure out who or what is behind this new threat. Could the pandemic be the result of the upskilling vagus chips being offered to the lowest soc-ed class? Or are language chips being hacked? And what of the viral conspiracy theories by the mysterious Dark Court, sweeping the globe? Lilith must work every possible angle, and quickly: she is running out of time!

While attempting to stop a vast conspiracy on an intergalactic scale, Lilith also faces shocking revelations about her origin, coming to terms with her own destiny.

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EXCERPT

Her father then turned back to Lilith, gazing at her with the kindness she loved. “I have to go away.” He gulped. “You must be very brave, Lily. Because what I’m doing is for you. You’re very special. I believe you will change everything. Not just here, but everywhere.” With that he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small bracelet from inside his breast pocket. He handed it to Lilith.

“Another gift?” she asked, with cautious excitement. Lilith turned it over in her hand. It was silver, with a small, strange-looking screen on the outer side. The screen was narrow and black, and numbers were spinning in iridescent green, fleetingly across the screen.

“I guess it is. This is a SwissSecure bracelet. It will live with you, expanding as you grow.”

“Is it alive?” Lilith asked.

Her father chuckled. “In a way, I suppose it is. When you’re older, after you’re chipped, the numbers will stop spinning. And then you’ll receive a message from me—two, in fact.”

“Memoclips?” Lilith asked, confused. She knew that was what the chipped adults called them.

Her father dipped his head. “Actually, faceclips. They will explain things … when the time is right. For one thing, where the music comes from, the Nunciature Evangelion—the Tower of Songs.”

“Music?”

“It will come to you, later today. This music will help you become your potential, but it will also be your one Achilles heel …”

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Preview of the Songs of the Sage book series

The six books in the Songs of the Sage series explore the power of language, and how, with the advent of powerful AI technology, it can be commoditized by big tech, and turned into a weapon of mass destruction.

 Book #1, The Babel Apocalypse, explores this premise from an Earth-bound perspective, when large swathes of the world’s population suddenly lose the ability to use language, and consequently can no longer communicate.

The book’s prologue introduces one of the protagonists, Professor Ebba Black, the last native speaker of language in the automated world, who lives in a time when language is no longer learned but streamed directly to language chips, implanted in people’s brains at birth.

In the prologue, Ebba is witness to a mysterious apparition, an angelic figure who transforms into a woman, Lilith King. Lilith is the protagonist of the second book in the series, The Dark Court, and provides Ebba with a warning, a prophesy and a gift. The prophesy relates to an imminent global language outage, caused by a cyberattack on the language streaming servers in low Earth orbit. This language outage is the apocalyptic event with which Ebba, and Europol Cybercrime commander, Emyr Morgan, must grapple during the course of The Babel Apocalypse.

Book #2, The Dark Court, which introduces Lilith King in detail, further develops this theme once language streaming is restored. It does so by exploring the consequences of the very language chips, implanted in people’s heads, which can be hacked, to kill off large swathes of the population. This is achieved by using language chips to suppress melatonin production in the brain, causing a fatal insomnia pandemic.

Book #3 in the series, The Rise of the Mashiach, sees Ebba and Lilith team up, to counter other-worldly forces, the mysterious Watchers, who seek to use infrasound to disable language chips, causing them to irradiate the brains of most of the world’s population—causing instantaneous death.

Book #4 in the series, The Time Seers of Kairos, contextualizes the events on Earth, by relating them to the sinister Sage, and an intergalactic plot to control all sentient beings with an addictive system of communication: the Mind Chant. This is a unique “song” transmitted from the distant planet Empyrean to an individual’s brain, across the known universe. The “songs” transmitted by the Sage can be switched off, causing death within twelve hours, for each individual targeted. Death occurs following a period of increasingly agonizing withdrawal symptoms.

Books #5 and #6 in the series bring events to a head, as the battle between good and evil rages, centered on who controls language. The events described in these books also resolve the ending that befell our male protagonist from book #1, the Europol commander, Emyr Morgan.

The overarching motif of the Songs of the Sage book series is: They who control language control everything.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Vyvyan Evans is a native of Chester, England. He holds a PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and is a Professor of Linguistics. He has published numerous acclaimed popular science and technical books on language and linguistics. His popular science essays and articles have appeared in numerous venues including ‘The Guardian’, ‘Psychology Today’, ‘New York Post’, ‘New Scientist’, ‘Newsweek’ and ‘The New Republic’. His award-winning writing focuses, in one way or another, on the nature of language and mind, the impact of technology on language, and the future of communication. His science fiction work explores the status of language and digital communication technology as potential weapons of mass destruction.

Book website (including ‘Buy’ links): http://www.songs-of-the-sage.com

Author website: https://www.vyvevans.net/

Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@vyvevans

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VyvEvans

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Vyvyan.Evans.Author

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nephilim_publishing/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

Vyvyan Evans will award a randomly drawn winner paperback copies of both book 1 and book 2 on the series – Enter to win two books – a Rafflecopter giveaway