Griffin’s Daughter
Please welcome Leslie Ann Moore to the site with her fantasy tale, Griffin’s Daughter:
The humans of Soldara generally view the elves of Alasiri through a prism of superstition and hate; nevertheless, in the borderlands, both races have quietly intermingled for centuries. Those of mixed blood, however, are the victims of bigotry and scorned as inferior in Soldaran society.
Seventeen year old Jelena, of human and elven blood, has spent her entire life as an outcast in Amsara Castle. Her mother, the sister of the Duke of Amsara, died giving birth to her, leaving Jelena to be raised by her foster mother Claudia in the servants’ hall, denied her proper place in the family by her uncle. Though her life is hard, Jelena has managed to adapt to her circumstances. Her fragile peace is shattered when she discovers she has a mysterious and frightening new ability that manifests itself as a powerful blast of blue energy. Convinced the energy is a form of magic inherent in her elven blood, Jelena desperately wants to learn the nature of her ability, and how to control it. She knows the only people who can teach her about elven magic are the elves themselves.
When the Duke announces his intention of selling her as a concubine, Jelena decides to flee Amsara forever. Claudia gives Jelena an extraordinary gift – a clue to her elven father’s identity in the form of a signet ring. As Jelena’s mother lay dying, she had given the ring to Claudia, charging her with keeping it safe and seeing that her daughter received the ring when she was old enough to understand its meaning.
With the ring as her only link to her unknown father, Jelena sets off north, her cousin Magnes by her side. The two cousins make it to the border, but are ambushed by bandits near the bank of a river. Just as the bandits are closing in for the kill, a mounted elven patrol sweeps down upon them. The leader of the elven patrol is Ashinji Sakehera, a young man unhappily constrained by the dictates of a society as tradition-bound and hierarchical as its Soldaran counterpart. Ashinji has been troubled by a dream, one in which a half-elven girl cries out to him for help, only to be swallowed up by a mysterious force of unspeakable menace. He has no idea what the dream means, but he will soon find out its significance as he rushes headlong into a stunning confrontation at the river’s edge.
Meanwhile, an ancient entity, imprisoned and unconscious for a millennium, has at long last awakened. Implacably evil, its lust for revenge upon those who stripped it of power and exiled it to the eternal dark is second only to its desire to reclaim the key to its lost magic, a magic that will allow it to escape its prison and destroy, then remake, the material world to suit its own purpose. The entity with no name knows the magical key resides within a vessel, a living being that carries the energy in the form of a blue fire…
Griffin’s Daughter is the story of a young woman’s struggle to find her place in the world, a young man’s search for his life’s purpose, and the strength of true love.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
There are quite a few spots were the sound goes dead for several seconds and I can even hear the background noise a few times. I’m not a perfectionist but its enough to turn me away from this podcast.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Hey Bitsy, if you read this… can you tell me where you heard the pauses and / or background noises? I’m the audio engineer for this project and would like to make it better.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I agree with Bitsy, its a good story but there are lots of pauses, which as they usually happen in the middle of a sentence are particularly frustrating. The pauses are getting so frustrating that despite enjoying the story I am seriously considering dropping the feed. I listen to my podcasts while I am doing other things so I haven’t been able to take note of where the pauses are but episode 4 is particularly bad with what must be about ten of them, including a particularly long one with an inadvertently recorded discussion of weather airplane noise has been pick up (I couldn’t hear it).
September 19th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Good story. The ‘B’ roll (unedited version) accidentally posted was kind of funny. It shows you work hard to polish the show. Make sure you get some outside ears on the grammar and diction. Your character voices are sometimes puzzling floating from 19th c english working class to modern american english. Also, consider using the schwa form of A (uh) instead of the long A for all of the time (A book, A box) (use uh book, uh box…)
September 19th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
The end of “unexpected invitation” suffered from really clipped narration, like a compression algorithm was run that cut all the dramatic pauses and really hurt the flow. “Unwelcome News” is frustrating with all the starts and stops. I’m considering dropping it for now and coming back in a few weeks to check the comments to see if it will get sorted out.
Can any of you that are ahead of me say whether it clears up? I like the characters, but the technical part and lack of flow of the reader may drive be back to relisten to other titles I’ve already finished
September 20th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
It does appear some of the early chapters were not as polished as they should have been. It’s being corrected now, I’ll make another post once the new versions of the first 4 episodes replace the old ones.
September 21st, 2008 at 1:20 am
Episode 4 (aka Chapter 2) has been repaired, now just waiting for it to be accepted. Hopefully it will be soon
December 30th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I downloaded the second promo file (”paerts 3 and 4″) this week and found an entirely dead spot between 4:06 and 4:30. Please check. (This is not a problem with my player. Audacity shows the silence.)
- toby robison
February 1st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I reall don’t see anything wrong with it. I love it, maybe I just love magical romances. I’m seriously dying for chapter 20
February 17th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I absolutely love this podiobook. Sure it has it’s hiccups here and there, but the story is compelling enough that i’ve been sucked into it for a long time.
On that note.. it’s sure been a while since a new episode was released. I know you all have lives outside of the podiobook world, but can’t we have a couple of new chapters yet?!
just one, or two… or five hehehe! 
April 25th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Hope more episodes are coming soon. I really don’t like to have to wait forever between episodes for good stories. It has been over a month and a half.
May 4th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
What happen? I’m still waiting for the next chapter. Its been a long long time now. And I just hate it when an author’s episodes dyes (fades) out.
I do want to say thank you for the story so far. Its been great.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
It has been two months now without any update from the author or any new episodes. I don’t want to have to unsubscribe, but I dislike being left hanging like this.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:15 am
Thank you for the two new episodes. It made my day.