Book Title: The King’s Champion

Series: The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy

Author: Nancy Northcott

Publication Date: May 1, 2023

Publisher: Falstaff Books

Page Length: 378

Genre: Historical fantasy with romantic elements

Twitter Handle: @NancyNorthcott @cathiedunn

Instagram Handle: @NancyNorthcottAuthor @thecoffeepotbookclub

Hashtags: #HistoricalFantasy #WWII #Dunkirk #RomanticFantasy #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

Blog Tour Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/05/blog-tour-kings-champion-by-nancy-northcott.html

Book Title and Author Name:

The King’s Champion

Nancy Northcott

Blurb:

The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy

A wizard’s misplaced trust

A king wrongly blamed

A bloodline cursed until they clear the king’s name.

Book 3: The King’s Champion

Caught up in the desperate evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in the summer of 1940, photojournalist Kate Shaw witnesses death and destruction that trigger disturbing visions. She doesn’t believe in magic and tries to pass them off as survivor guilt or an overactive imagination, but the increasingly intense visions force her to accept that she is not only magically Gifted but a seer.

In Dover, she meets her distant cousin Sebastian Mainwaring, Earl of Hawkstowe and an officer in the British Army. He’s also a seer and is desperate to recruit her rare Gift for the war effort. The fall of France leaves Britain standing alone as the full weight of Nazi military might threatens. Kate’s untrained Gift flares out of control, forcing her to accept Sebastian’s help in conquering it as her ethics compel her to use her ability for the cause that is right.

As this fledgling wizard comes into her own, her visions warn of an impending German invasion, Operation Sealion, which British intelligence confirms. At the same time, desire to help Sebastian, who’s doomed by a family curse arising from a centuries-old murder, leads Kate to a shadowy afterworld between life and death and the trapped, fading souls who are the roots of her family’s story. From the bloody battlefields of France to the salons of London, Kate and Sebastian race against time to free his family’s cursed souls and to stop an invasion that could doom the Allied cause.

The King’s Champion concludes Nancy’s Northcott’s exciting Boar King’s Honor Trilogy.

Buy Links:

This series is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Universal Buy Links:   

The Herald of Day

Universal Buy Link

The Steel Rose

Universal Buy Link

The King’s Champion

Universal Buy Link

The Boar King’s Honor Trilogy Links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon AU

Amazon CA

Author Bio:

Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman.  Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, history, and romance.

Nancy earned her undergraduate degree in history and particularly enjoyed a summer spent studying Tudor and Stuart England at the University of Oxford. She has given presentations on the Wars of the Roses and Richard III to university classes studying Shakespeare’s play about that king. In addition, she has taught college courses on science fiction, fantasy, and society.   

The Boar King’s Honor historical fantasy trilogy combines Nancy’s love of history and magic with her interest in Richard III. She also writes traditional romantic suspense, romantic spy adventures, and two other speculative fiction series, the Light Mage Wars paranormal romances and, with Jeanne Adams, the Outcast Station space mystery series.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.NancyNorthcott.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/NancyNorthcott

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/nancynorthcottstreetteam

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

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nancynorthcott/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/nancy-northcott

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Nancy-Northcott/author/B00ITY5KLS

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3468806.Nancy_Northcott

The Heart of Every Novel

by Nancy Northcott

The most important thing, the heart of every novel, is the cast of characters. Unless readers care about them and root for them, the book is likely to land on the DNF (Did Not Finish) pile while the reader moves on.

So how do we create characters that engage readers? Like many writers I know, I start by imagining walking through the characters’ lives. I see characters against the backdrops of the problems they face. How they deal with them is what truly reveals their natures.

The Boar King’s Honor trilogy centers on a family under a curse, the Mainwarings. In 1483, Edmund Mainwaring, a wizard and the Earl of Hawkstowe, unwittingly helped murder the two boys of royal blood known as the Princes in the Tower. Their uncle, King Richard III, was blamed. When Edmund learned what he had abetted, he was aghast and threw himself on the king’s mercy. Because of the political situation, King Richard told him to speak until the king gave him leave. But Richard III, who used a white boar as his emblem, died at Bosworth Field without ever granting Edmund that permission.

The Tudors who then came to power denied King Richard’s right to the throne, blamed him for the boys’ deaths, and generally smeared his reputation. Speaking up while they reigned would’ve cost Edmund his life. Tormented by guilt, he cursed his entire line so his heirs couldn’t rest in life or death until they cleared the king’s name. The souls of his deceased heirs wander a wraith-infested, shadowy realm between the worlds of the living and the dead. The Boar King’s Honor trilogy follows the Mainwaring family’s efforts to lift the curse while also confronting bigger problems with far-ranging consequences.

The first book of the trilogy, The Herald of Day, is set in 1674. After almost 200 years, the Mainwarings’ hope of lifting the curse is fading. I thought about how I might feel in the place of that era’s heir, Richard Mainwaring and so came up with the fate that awaits him. His mother never forgave his father for the doom facing their son, so Richard is resolved not to inflict it on another generation. He plans to be the last Mainwaring. Yet he’s conscientious and responsible, especially with his magic, and tries to live a good life.

Richard needed someone more optimistic, someone who believed in hope. Miranda Willoughby, a tavern maid from Dover, gradually took shape. She’s also a wizard but is untrained in using her magical Gifts. She hides her abilities because England is still in the business of hanging witches. Her mother was hanged as a witch.

After her father and brother died in the Great Fire of London, other relatives found her this position as a tavern maid. She uses her abilities to be inconspicuous and uninteresting. Then she witnesses the hanging of a woman who was convicted of witchcraft but has no magical Gifts. Knowing the condemned woman is innocent, Miranda longs to do something to help. That feeling triggers her seer ability. It spurs visions about a white boar and a dragon The visions tell her to summon the boar’s knight. She resists doing so, but the visions give her no peace. Under threat of losing her job because she’s distracted, she sends a summons. Richard answers it. The symbols in the vision, which he recognizes as heraldic emblems, are related to his family curse. He can’t pass up even a slim chance to end it.

He and Miranda have a bigger problem, though. Crops fail, objects that were lost reappear and others vanish, and the dead walk. Richard, Miranda, and their friends must learn why and put things right.

For book 2, The Steel Rose, I wanted very different characters. So the hero, Julian Winfield, Lord Aysgarth, is not a Mainwaring heir. He’s a scholar of magic, a wizard spy, and director of the Merlin Club, a covert organization of wizards working to protect England. It’s early 1815, everyone thinks Napoleon is safely on Elba, and Julian looks forward to raising his horses, tending to his lands, and recovering from his years spying on the French and their wizards.

The heroine, Amelia Bastingstoke, is a widowed viscountess and a seer. Her twin brother, the most recent Mainwaring heir, and their father were killed together in a magical accident. Amelia longs to find a way to lift the curse and free their souls. She turns to Julian, who was a friend of her late brother. But before he can find anything of use, catastrophe occurs. Napoleon escapes Elba and heads for Paris, where he receives a hero’s welcome.

Bonaparte’s wars bankrupted France, costing her the better part of a generation of young men, yet Frenchmen flock to his banner. Why? Amelia’s visions suggest magic is the answer. The Allies gather in Brussels. Napoleon consolidates his hold on power, and battle is coming—at Waterloo, though no one knows that yet. Amelia and Julian must set aside their personal concerns to stop Napoleon before he plunges Europe back into war.

The final book, The King’s Champion, brings the story up to 1940 and the Battle of Britain. The era offered me more options for a heroine than I had for Miranda or Amelia. Kate Shaw is a photojournalist. Women are still rare in the ranks of reporters, and Kate knows she has to be better than good to be respected. She is also a wizard and a seer but doesn’t know it.

Caught up in the Dunkirk evacuation, Kate meets her distant cousin Sebastian Mainwaring, an army officer, a wizard, and a seer, on the pier at Dover. He has been alerted to her abilities by family ghosts and immediately realizes how much someone with her Gifts could help the British cause. France has fallen, America is isolationist, and much of Britain’s war materiel lies abandoned in France. Britain needs every bit of help she can get. But first he has to convince Kate that magic is not only real but part of her.

He has two things going for him. First, Kate is fundamentally honest, even with herself. Second, she believes in doing the right thing. As the summer wears on, her visions become increasingly compelling and foreshadow the invasion known as Operation Sealion. Can she and Sebastian and their friends stop the invasion?

As though that weren’t enough, the stakes are rising for the souls of Sebastian’s doomed ancestors. He must find a way to help them. But how can he dig up evidence to lift a curse when there’s a war on?

These people have lived in my head for a long time. I’m sorry to say goodbye to them. They can appear in other stories, of course, but their own stories are done. I’m going miss spending time with them.

Thanks for having me, y’all!