Excerpts Science Fantasy Read an Excerpt From Idolfire by Grace Curtis An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome… By Grace Curtis | Published on February 21, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Idolfire by Grace Curtis, a character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slowburn romance—out from DAW on March 11th. On one side of the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is desperate for a chance. Her family have written her off as a mistake, but she’s determined to prove every last one of them wrong.On the other, Kirby of Wall’s End is searching for redemption. An ancient curse tore her life apart, but to fix it, she’ll have to leave everything behind.Fate sets them both on the path to Nivela, a city once poised to conquer the world with the power of a thousand stolen gods. Now the gates are closed and the old magic slumbers. Dead—or waiting for a spark to light it anew… “You” PAY ATTENTION. Pay very close attention. This is how a city is born. This is also how you are born, because you and this city are one. A single creature. An enfolded whole, more than coexisting. You and the city are the same being.  Aren’t you? Anyway. The story goes like this. A princess from a distant land (it doesn’t matter which) was fated to give birth to a great hero, and so her father, fearing he would be usurped by his grandson, forbade her to marry. But he couldn’t stop her from looking out of her window and  seeing the young soldier who paraded past each day in the courtyard. They married in secret and soon she was pregnant with his child.  (The story does not touch on what she was thinking, how she ever hoped to hide that pregnant belly from her father. And you can remember jokes about this part of the story, boys with half a blanket stuffed beneath their tunics saying in a girlish falsetto, “Oh no, Father, ’tis not a child, I have only gorged myself too much at dinner.” You all fell about laughing.)  Buy the Book Idolfire Grace Curtis Buy Book Idolfire Grace Curtis Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget There was a short period of marital bliss until the news inevitably reached the king. Of course, he was furious. The young soldier was executed despite the princess’s tearful pleas.  (Perhaps she thought there would be no need to keep the lie going forever, that the king would be moved by the conviction of his daughter, that he would show mercy on this small family once he saw how truly in love they were. Silly girl.) The king could not bring himself to kill his only child, and so he ordered her cast out into the wilderness. By now she was very pregnant indeed. Heartbroken and weeping, she wandered barefoot for many miles and fell down dead at the bank of a river. But the baby lived on. It was birthed from the corpse, squalling, slimy and horribly alive. A snake came along and tried to make a meal of the child, but the child bit first and suckled at the wound as he would a mother’s breast. A passing farmer found the boy soon after with his mouth still clasped on the serpent’s tail. The name of the princess is lost to history…  (Lost forever, though during your reign you will devote vast resources to trying to find some trace of her, this girl, who you can see in your dreams sometimes, her upper half in sleeping repose with a hand outstretched toward the water’s edge, her lower half a blur of shit and gore.) …but the son was called Nivelus and immortalized himself by founding a city on the bank of the river where he was born. He called the city Nivela. This is you. Part and parcel, blood and brick. Soul and city, forever intertwined. There is another story, one of a brigands’ camp that swelled over time with plundered wealth, and of a first generation born through kidnap and rape. But that story is whispered, not inscribed in stone. Excerpted from Idolfire, copyright © 2025 by Grace Curtis. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Idolfire</i> by Grace Curtis appeared first on Reactor.