Have you ever lost a memory? Are you sure it wasn’t stolen? What would you if could steal someone else’s memories? Rachel Emma Shaw uses this interesting premise for her fantasy thriller duology, Memoria, beginning with Last Memoria.
Rachel Emma Shaw and her book Last Memoria are SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off) finalists! The second book in the duology, Scars of Cereba will be released this May so this is the perfect time to pick up Last Memoria.
Rachel Emma Shaw
A neuroscientist by training, Rachel started writing to escape the rigors of reality, but has struggled increasingly ever since to remain grounded. She slips a little further each day into the worlds she makes up, fascinated by the creation of societies that hold a mirror to our own. Born in Manchester, England, she moved to London after university and living in Memphis, Tennessee, for a year, planting roots in a quaint part north of the city. Last Memoria is her first book. It was published in 2020 and became an SPFBO finalist in the same year. Its sequel is Scars of Cereba, which delve further into a world with memory thieves and the consequences of abusing of such a power. Her third novel Sacaran Nights is due for release in 2021 and continues her trend of exploring fantasy cultures so unlike our own, but this time in a society that lives for the dead.
She loves to write in the local cafes and pubs, freaking people out with the many faces she pulls as she unwittingly acts out her writing, but that was all in the pre-pandemic days of course. Since then, she has retreated into her fantasy worlds, rapidly losing touch with reality and social norms. To contact her, go to Hampstead Heath and send up smoke signals. She won’t be able to understand them, nor will she likely look up from her writing for long enough to see them, but the effort will be greatly appreciated all the same.
Last Memoria
Summary
Sarilla has learnt one thing from stealing memories. Everybody lies.
There’s nothing Sarilla hates more than stealing memories, but the king forces her to take them to keep his subjects in line. She wants to escape to where nobody knows what she is or what she can do, but her plans go awry when she runs into Falon, who has a six month void in his memories that he’s desperate to restore. He doesn’t know why they were taken or what they contained, nor why the man he loves is acting so cagily about what happened during that time. He hopes to use Sarilla to get back his stolen memories and doesn’t care what she wants or why she’s desperate to escape. She will help him get them back, whether she wants to or not.
