Fire Mountain second fantasy instalment in the Tales of the Q’alix

Ten thousand years after the Great Ice, evil is on the rise. The Morok, a murderous force, has taken over Erainn, the holy land of the tribes, and enslaved its keepers…

The second instalment of the epic fantasy trilogy Tales of the Q’alix – a Tolkien-esque world of wild tribes, mythical creatures and unearthly talismans is released next week in paperback.

In part one of the trilogy, The Shining Stone, Osian, a young hunter, searching for his lost family, comes across a strange object, the Shining Stone, a thing of power, with links to the time before the Ice. He uses it as a weapon against the Morok, but learns it has a mission of its own – and a deadly secret.

In Fire Mountain, Osian and his band of renegades take their dangerous quest into unchartered territory. Led by the mysterious shaman Tiroc Og they travel to the lair of the Morok leader there to seek his family and free the slaves.

Facing betrayal from within, an impossible wolf-ridden terrain and the encroachment of a desperate enemy, the renegades must rely more than ever on the curious powers of the Shining Stone.  Meanwhile, Osian has fallen for Gimin, a beautiful warrior of the Fox-Wolf tribe. But she, like so many others and so much else on this journey, may not be what she seems.

Dr Brendan Quayle is an award-winning environmental writer and filmmaker. He is the author (with David Bellamy) of the best-selling England’s Last Wilderness and the seminal Turning the Tide.

Scots Irish of Manx ancestry, he lives with his family by a wild wood in the North of England. Trained originally as an anthropologist, he studied amongst shamans and real-life sorcerers in the mountain tribes of the High Himalaya. His extraordinary experiences there, together with his lifelong interest in the myth and folklore of his Celtic ancestors, provide the inspiration and much of the source material for The Shining Stone.

Fire Mountain will be available in paperback from 16 April 2025 (£11.99) and is currently available in ebook (£3.99) at all good bookshops and online booksellers. www.brendanquayle.com