Description

OVERVIEW: A man awakens in a filthy bedroom with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. Seeing an old Gideon bible on a nightstand, he finds a name to call his own – Temple. This is the story of Temple’s quest for identity and purpose in a dying, decaying world.

By turns heartbreaking, enlightening, and surreal, British fantasist Steven Savile has created a story that T.M. Wright describes as “a story about Death written by a man who has clearly consorted with devils.”

This novella comprises the four part Temple series published in Apex Digest issues five through eight, with a special introduction from T.M. Wright and an afterword from the author.

Only 100 hardcovers was produced, each numbered, and signed by Steven Savile, T.M. Wright, and cover/interior artist Judi Davidson.

112 Pages, Apex Publications, First Edition Hardcover, only 100 copies produced.

Blurbs

Savile has re-charted the dim magical landscape of Eliot’s Waste Land, Carroll’s Wonderland, and Dante’s Inferno to discover an astonishing and absolute world all his own. A world inhabited by ghosts, witches and demons, who prove only half as monstrous as what Temple finds in the debris of his (our) own humanity. Brutally dark and poetic, Savile weaves “fear in a handful of dust,” with just the right touch of hope still lurking in every shadow.
—Geoffrey Girard, author of Tales of the Jersey Devil and Tales of the Atlantic Pirates

Dark beauty, black hope, achingly relentless are phrases that come to mind when I think of Steven Savile’s Temple: Incarnations. This is writing that gets under your skin and worms into your brain, leaving scars from the memory of a world too real, too close to forget. With phantom ash in my lungs and a fist crushing my heart, Temple has made me a very happy Savile fan.
—Fran Friel, 2006 Bram Stoker nominated author of Mama’s Boy

Here’s the truth: we, all of us, are the “wandering dispossessed,” and Savile knows it. You may be reading this little book in a comfortable room, in a comfortable house, in a comforting city, within an apparently comforting and secure civilization, but all of us know (or we wouldn’t be reading this book) that all of that matters little, if at all, that circumstances not just beyond our control, but, more importantly, beyond our ken, will doubtless change everything, everything, and we will see ourselves for what we really are: wandering (without real focus; because where do we focus?), dispossessed, and in imminent danger of becoming one with the abundant dead.
—T.M. Wright, author of A Manhattan Ghost Mystery

This story has all the ingredients of a classic…
—Matthew Tait, reviewer for Horrorscope.com

About the Author

Steven Savile has edited a number of critically acclaimed anthologies and collections, including Redbrick Eden and, Dr Who: Destination Prague, most recently, Elemental for Tor Books in the US, as well as Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions and Black Gondolier and Other Stories, the collected horror stories of Fritz Leiber. Steven is also the author of the Von Carstein Vampire trilogy, Inheritance, Dominion, and Retribution, set in Games Workshop’s popular Warhammer world, and has re-imagined the blood-thirsty celtic barbarian Slaine from 2000 AD in a new series of novels (Slaine: The Exile and Slaine: The Defiler) for Black Flame. Steven has written for Star Wars and Jurassic Park as well as his own novels and short stories, including Houdini’s Last Illusion (Telos) and Angel Road (Elastic Press). He was a runner up in the British Fantasy Awards, a winner of a Writers of the Future Award in 2002, and has been nominated for the 2006 Scribe Award for excellence in licensed tie-in novel, Best Novel Adapted category (Slaine: The Exile).

Steven maintains a website at StevenSavile.com.