Stromberg author

Maej by Dale Stromberg

Hundred-day children are stolen from the Ilasghra every week. No one can stop it. Madma and Tantli have grown up like sisters in the tentslum of the Ilas, where their people are starved and beaten. All their lives, they’ve powerlessly witnessed the regular abduction of hundred-day babies born with too much mæj. Just before an Ilasi boy is killed by djanizaries for daring to venture beyond the tentslum walls, his final words lead Madma to the Gaol where the boy’s stolen sister is locked away—a place from which Ilasi children never return. Burning to act, Madma vows to free the imprisoned girl, setting off events that may ignite a revolution and convulse Sforre-Yomnic society from its squalid dungeons to the labyrinthine paths of its scheming elite’s hovering parliament. Delicately plotted, sumptuously set and vibrantly worded, MAEJ is a lavish standalone high-fantasy epic, perfect for fans of A Stranger in Olondria or The Spear Cuts Through Water.

Melancholic Parables by Dale Stromberg

Bellatrix Sakakino has lived many lives. She dampens electricity. She longs for a fruit that went extinct before she was born. She’s radioactive. She’s not above committing a massacre for the sake of a perfect omelet. She crashes through timelines and circumstances, recurring in these flash stories as a tricksterish film director, a pink hedgehog, a simulation of herself, or a child who can only speak in dial-up modem shrieks. Are we the same person we were last year? Or last week? Or last story? Whimsical and dolorous, ironic and absurd, this slippery assortment of stories dances around these questions with ambiguous aplomb.