Homogeny (The Fractured Cities Tales) · Alek L. Cristea ✦ Indie Paperback

Return to the world of Cornucopia, a world of fractured cities and wayward hearts, where even the smallest act of rebellion can birth a spark that will ignite.

For each city, there is a spark, and for each spark, there is a story.

Far to the north, the city of Homogeny stands. A city of calm conformity and peaceful order, a city ringed by safe, dark walls that keep the chaotic world outside at bay.

In Homogeny, peace reigns. The peace of knowing how each day begins and ends, its denizens wrapped in the comfort of perfect script. A place for everything, and everything in its place: that is the way of Homogeny. To deviate is to invite chaos, and with chaos comes madness and death.

Better to surrender—your dreams, your hopes, yourself—and fall into the comfort of the known, the predictable, the safe. Follow the script, and know your place.

Yet here, in this city of dreamless, hopeless grey, the Patchwork Carnival was born.

Here, in Homogeny, a band of sinners stands tall.

Nobody knows how the Carnival was forged, only that it began with defiance, with a dream, with music and colour and light. It began with Gold.

Nobody knows when the Carnival will appear, grey, dour streets erupting with the sights and sounds of its performance, but everybody knows that getting too close, lingering too long to watch the show will let the performers steal your soul.

But what if a soul wants to be stolen?

What if a young man, bored with his grey life and this grey world, dares to yearn for more?

In the Patchwork Carnival, Gold and her performers wait with arms wide open, an outstretched hand thrown out into the grey. Come with us, the Carnival urges. Run with us, it begs. Play with us, it asks. One by one, Gold and her Carnival will free them all.

But with the Carnival itself an aberration, a living sin inside of Homogeny’s perfect calm, the city will not idly stand by and let the Patchwork Carnival destroy all that has been built, and this time, it may very well take more than a single spark to light up the swallowing grey.

Perhaps this time, the Carnival will be put down for good.