The First Whispers of Fate

The Talavara Prophecy, Book 1

When you seek the truth, be sure you are prepared to find it.Aideen Bormia keeps her heritage a secret. She is ke’i gen de’san - one born of two bloods. The daughter of the wealthiest man in Sona, Aideen presents as human in high society, hiding her elven ears with elaborate hairstyles to avoid the scorn endured by her mother’s people. When Aideen finds her father dead, a growing madness fractures her very sense of self. She is one moment submerged in the cool waters of emotionless observation. The next, she sees through the molten eyes of a monster.Aideen’s life of privilege is snatched away and she comes face to face with the darkness hiding beneath the glittering façade of Sona. Nothing is as she thought it was. No one is beyond suspicion. What does justice look like in an unjust world?Hamfast is a cook aboard the Dragonfly, the famed first ship of the Bormia Trading Company. He is a Lindle – a race of small folk – and the ship’s kitchen has been his tidy domain for over thirty years. The Dragonfly has crossed the Misty Sea twice, a feat few have dared attempt. When the ship is commissioned to sail out into unknown waters in search of a mythical island, Hamfast finds himself lost for the first time.Hamfast is thrust into an adventure beyond the depths of a simple cook. But is this journey the result of his own choices and chance, or are there greater forces at play?

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“Part Epic Fantasy, part Murder Mystery, dripping with Jane Austin vibes.”“C.J. has a gift for creating rich worlds and dynamic characters with a writing style that’s sure to delight readers.”"A delightful twist on the Cinderella story."“Sometimes, writing simply serves as the delivery method for plot, characters, etc. (like a chip carries dip)... However, this prose style is a chip worth eating on its own.”"Posing as a combination of fantasy, novel of manners, and detective story, this book examines conceptions of race and class and explores the nature of cognition—all in a really great read. Thoroughly unique and completely engrossing, The First Whisper of Fate needs to be on your to-be-read list!"

Christopher Nolen is an American author living in the Netherlands. His name is a letter away from a certain famous director, so he publishes under his childhood nickname C.J. to appease the algorithm gods.C.J. spent nearly two decades working in technology. This included a spy agency, the military, and Apple. It was less interesting than it sounds. In 2024, he left the tech world and moved to the Netherlands to pursue creative work. In addition to writing novels, he is also cofounder of Goo Monster Studio where he serves as Creative Director.C.J. is a long-time TTRPG fan and is a recovering Forever DM. He is a fan of all games both digital and tabletop, is a mediocre piano player, and loves to cook almost as much as Hamfast does. When not reading or writing, he can be seen biking around The Hague with his wife and son.After a brief experiment with social media, those accounts have now been deleted. You can still find C.J. on the Goo Monster Studio YouTube, where he discusses video games, books, and the arts.

The First Whispers of Fate

The Talavara Prophecy, Book 1

On Literary Merit

The story itself is supposed to be fun. But it can be more than that. So while fancy balls and sword duels and heists are front and center, this series explores a number of societal issues without the baggage of reality and politics.

On Race, Gender, and Class Identity

The Talavara Prophecy is set in a world populated by many of the classic fantasy races. Humans, elves, dwarves, and all the rest. But I’m staying loose with Tolkien’s tropes. The point of these fantasy races is to explore identity and culture. Or more importantly, the friction between those cultures. Racism, class, and gender inequality exist in spades in this world.The main protagonist, Aideen, is a mixed race teenager - her father human, her mother an elf. Aideen is able to present as human, avoiding the discrimination elves face in her society. Her mother is dead, like so many other YA protagonists. This leaves Aideen caught between cultures, being raised in the world of humans and trying to understand the elven part of her heritage when she only has her uncle to tell her about it. Aideen struggles to find her place in the world, her feelings on her own identity inconsistent.Aideen’s father is wealthy now, but was a common sailor for most of his life. Aideen is new money, her family’s status an uncertain outlier between commoner and nobility. Her family is essentially the first among an emerging urban merchant class, and this shifting social dynamic plays into the story.Much of Aideen’s story is an exploration of how the world sees her and an evolution of how she sees herself.

On Morality and Choice

This is a fantasy world with made up gods, so any discussion of morality lacks the religious connection to our own world’s faith traditions. But I grew up in church, so it’s hard to divorce myself from certain ideas. I introduce an elven concept called pouv’oua. This is, in essence, a variation on timshel from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. It is the power of choice. It is the idea that you are the sum of your choices, and that even the smallest acts of right and wrong accumulate in your character. You are shaped by the choices you make, especially the ones that are known only to you. If this sounds like the fable of the two wolves, you get the idea.In this story, Aideen is seeking many truths. More importantly, she seeks justice for her father’s murderer. It’s a noble pursuit on paper. And yet along the way she is making choices and mistakes and learning harsh realities about the world. In the end, she discovers that there will be no justice for her father. In response to this, she chooses a path of vengeance. This choice will shape the rest of her life. The recognition of this being a mistake, and seeking to redeem herself, is a primary theme in the second book.

On Sex and Sexuality

Minimal in book one. There is a wedding engagement. A kiss. A scene where a scantily clad woman dances on a stage and the implication that she and others in the room are prostitutes. This latter scene exists to fuel a discussion on the choices some people have in this fantasy society due to gender, race, or status.There is a scene where Aideen discovers somebody is secretly gay. We learn that homosexuality is scandalous in Elora. Aideen’s reaction to this information is mostly centered on the secrecy of it - that here is somebody who hides a part of himself just like she hides her elven heritage.

On Violence

The protagonist finds her father dead in his study. She later suspects he was poisoned. One scene depicts a sword fight and a several “bad guys” die. The protagonist threatens a man who has information on her father’s murderer. There is a scene of murder with a knife.The descriptions of violence are gritty and intended to capture the seriousness of the situations. The descriptions are not gratuitous.

On Slavery / Human Trafficking

A secret slave trade is part of the plot. One character seeks to discover the people facilitating it. The slave trade in this book is highly fictional and tailored to the fantasy setting, but is based on historical accounts from across time periods and continents. Book 2 deals with this theme in much more detail.

On Historical Influence

Many ideas and events in this series are based on American history and ideals, ranging from the American Dream to the Underground Railroad. The intent here is to spark curiosity into ideas and historical events that have shaped the modern world.The Elorian slave trade has many parallels to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism, but it isn’t a perfect allegory. The plight of the minority races in Elora is based on realities across times and continents. It ranges from discrimination to enslavement to erasure through conquest. These are stories as old as time.Similarly, gender roles in Elora don’t fit neatly into any particular real-world time period or culture. Women have few rights and little autonomy without the supervision of their fathers or husbands. It is a diluted take on roughly Regency-era ideals. The idea was not to get bogged down in specifics, and to focus on how this society affects the characters.