She takes her young life and runs for it. Don’t and accept your fate.” Csorwe, having never been offered a choice in anything, she is offered what could be the most pivotal choice of her life. In the last hour of her life, she is approached by the wizard Sethennai, a wizard, he offers her a choice, “serve me, and I will save you. This great honor that has been bestowed upon her by this wrathful god. Csorwe has been brainwashed her entire life. Choice, as a concept, is a wholly foreign concept. The first 14 years of her life have been entirely without choice. She grows up in what I can only think of as a cult where every 14 years, a girl child that has been groomed to become the bride of a god is devoured in sacrifice to appease the god. Csorwe is in a lot of ways unoriginal, at least at first. Larkwood’s debut novel, the first of a grand new series aptly named The Serpents Gates stars the character Cswore. Are our actions in this world truly choices? Or do we choose to do things based on what is expected of us? This story delves deeply into the nature of what choice actually is. This is one of the main aspects of the lead protagonist Csorwe, and I think of The Unspoken Name in general. Nothing in this world or any other deserves your fear.” “You have looked your foretold death in the face and turned from it in defiance. Thus spake the Nameless One upon the plains of dust Thy name shall be forsaken and thou be my bride Thus shall we know thee, handmaid of desolation “By the touch of thy hand shall the black lotus bloom After that, the world is open to you choice-wise. There is absolute power in hitting bottom you have faced death, the end, and come out on the other side. A.K Larkwood’s debut novel, The Unspoken Name, the first novel in The Serpent’s Gate series, is all about choice.

The unspoken name