The Brickweavers

Aug 21, 2021

The Brickweavers – J.F. Williams 

 

Thujwa is a desert city, built from clay and mud, surrounded by walls, secretive, thirsty, and desirous of wealth. But it is also a place of cool breezes, improbably tall towers, plentiful water, bountiful farmland, and vehicles that traverse great distances in a few hundred heartbeats. That is because the Thujwani long ago discovered the secrets of brickweaving: the laying of bricks in special patterns that manipulate the forces of magnetism ("sword-binding") and gravity ("all-binding"). They have used this knowledge to gouge a world of comfort out of the desert, and to enslave others.

Jeppo is a brickweaver but a social pariah who rejected status for love. So it's surprising that Thujwa's highest holy man chooses him to complete a cryptic mission outside the city walls. Joining him will be his new apprentice, a hapless youth named Kulkulla who had washed out in the other guilds. What they find on their trek will only be the first of many discoveries, including the secret of Thujwa's founding, the origin of brickweaving, the nature of the mud-clothed people who speak in a clicking language, and, ultimately, the parts the two of them will play in a centuries-old struggle against injustice.

Set in Northern Africa 4,000 years ago, The Brickweavers is a science-fiction adventure chronicling nine days that literally shook Thujwa.

"Whether brickweaving be art, magic, science, mathematics, geomancy or any and all of the above is a question that remains ambiguous—nicely so for readers pulled, as if by gravity, into this well-built narrative." - Kirkus Reviews

SPSFC Year 

Subgenres: Adventure, Alternative History / Parallel Universe, Time Travel

Date first published:  August 28, 2009

On Kindle Unlimited: No

Book Links

Goodreads
Amazon

Author Information

Twitter: 

Website: 

Biography: I graduated with a B.A. in English and began my working career as a proofreader, eventually becoming a copywriter. For a few years in the early 1980s, my words were being read daily by every third person who opened a newspaper in the U.S. and Canada as I wrote most of the movie and network programming synopses for the largest syndicator of TV listings in North America. It wasn't long before I moved into the technology side of the business and have been managing databases ever since. In November 2009, I entered NaNoWriMo to see if I could actually write a story longer than one paragraph. The idea of a lost ancient technology that manipulates gravity had been rolling around in my head for years, so I challenged myself to make the technology plausible, and to explore its effects on the culture that uses it without completely understanding it. The elegant, engaging prose style of 19th-Century masters like Verne and Haggard, whose adventure stories had thrilled me in my youth, seemed best suited to meet that challenge. I was committed to making the story entirely human and terrestrial, a secular science fantasy without angels or demons, vampires or werewolves, and no Von Däniken-like alien influences. Though I finished the first draft in April, 2010, I continued to revise and polish the work till I published through CreateSpace in 2012.

Other information

Cover artist name: J.F. Williams

Cover artist website: 

Editor/Formatter’s name: J.F. WIlliams

Editor/Formatter’s website: