Excerpt – Any Human Power by Manda Scott
Synopsis
From a bestselling storyteller who brings together myths and speculative futures with a radical compassion, comes the story of a family at the heart of a political crisis and the ensuing uprising of a disenfranchised generation. A family that harnesses the skills and stories needed for real change, if they can choose the right path, before it is too late …
As Lan lies dying, she makes a promise that binds her long into the Beyond. Fifteen years later, her teenage granddaughter, Kaitlyn, triggers an international storm of outrage that unleashes the rage of a whole betrayed generation. For one shining fragment of time, the world is with her. But then the backlash begins, and soon she and those closest to her find themselves facing the wrath of the old establishment, who will use every dirty trick in the book to fight them off.
Watching over the growing chaos is Lan, who taught them all to think independently, approach power skeptically, and dream with clear intent. She knows more than one generation’s hopes are on the line. Nothing less than the future of humanity stands in the balance.
Grand in scope, rich in courageous characters who breathe new life into ancient wisdom, here is a dream of a better future: a world we’d be proud to leave to our children and their children and on, generations down the line.
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Excerpt
PROLOGUE
February 2008
A grey midweek afternoon; raining, warm for the time of year.
The crow stoops straight out of the sun, spears into cloud and is lost for a while. It emerges into the kind of dreich drizzle that makes an umbrella seem like overkill, but still keeps the wipers moving intermittently on a stream of ambulances lining up outside the hospital below.
The hospital is the crow’s target, specifically, a single occupancy room on the third floor with a west-facing window outside which stands an ash tree, skeletoned by winter and sagging under a week’s weight of rain.
A final sweep brings the crow to rest in the tree’s crown. From here it skip-hops down to a long branch that has grown parallel to the window ledge, close enough to see in to the solitary bed. The branch is a perfect diameter for a long sit: nine days and nine nights in winter weather. Nine, the number of Odin, and thrice three, the number of Bride, both of them deities of death, birth and battle.
Time is what we make of it, and this crow is the very embodiment of patience. Only slightly grumpy, it hunches its shoulders, sidles closer to the tree’s trunk and settles in to wait.
Presently, a new occupant is brought into the room and installed in the bed: Alanna Penhaligon, sixty-two years old, grey-haired, and not known, if we’re honest, for her patience.
To read more, visit the publisher.
About the Author
Manda Scott is an award-winning novelist and host of the acclaimed Accidental Gods podcast.  Best known for the Boudica: Dreaming series, her previous novels have been short-listed for the Orange Prize, the Edgar, Wilbur Smith and Saltire Awards, and won the McIllvanney Prize. Her latest novel, ANY HUMAN POWER, is a Mytho-Political thriller that lays out a Thrutopian road map to a flourishing future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. With degrees in veterinary medicine and a Masters in Regenerative Economics, Manda’s life is oriented toward creating radical new narratives that will pave the way to the total systemic change our culture -and our world – needs.
