BLOG TOUR/GUEST POST/GIVEAWAY - THE ARMIES OF HEAVEN by JANE KINDRED

Today I welcome to the blog, Jane Kindred, author of The House of Arkhangel'sk series.  This blog tour is part of Jane's tour for the third book in the series, The Armies of Heaven.

Jane has written a great guest post for us and also has a fantastic giveaway for fans, which is open International - YAY!

A big thank you to Jane for taking the time from her busy schedule to write the guest post.

ENJOY!

MARISSA

---

About The Armies of Heaven, Book Three of The House of Arkhangel’sk

In Heaven, all hell has broken loose…

Full-scale war has broken out in Heaven, and Anazakia must embrace her destiny, leading an army of Virtues into battle against a Host of enemies to restore the House of Arkhangel’sk.

Furious with her for putting her trust in the angel who has done them all irreparable harm, Vasily tries to ignore his growing resentment, while Belphagor returns to the world of Man with a cadre of beautiful androgynous Virtues to restore the sundered alliance between the Fallen and the gypsy underground. Without their help in enlisting the terrestrial forces of Grigori and Nephilim, Anazakia’s Virtues are hopelessly outnumbered.

But there are more things in Heaven and Earth than any of them have dreamt of, and those they cannot see will mean the difference between victory and losing everything.

The Armies of Heaven is available for purchase from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Powell’s Books.

---

GUEST POST BY

JANE KINDRED

Why We Fall

Ever since I was a child in Sunday school, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of fallen angels—that we have this concept of “good” versus “evil,” yet the beings who represent the side of evil are merely the good who’ve gone bad. And what is “bad,” exactly? In the case of the angels who fell from heaven to become demons, it seems the key distinction was that the “bad” wanted autonomy.

Even as a little girl, I thought this seemed unfair.

The appeal of writing a story with a demon for a protagonist is that he is automatically flawed, and a hero must always be flawed. What’s interesting about someone who always follows the rules and does what he’s told, who never makes mistakes?

In my fantasy trilogy, The House of Arkhangel’sk, I used Heaven as a constructed world that parallels our own. In my Heaven, angels and demons are essentially one and the same. The difference is that the angelic ruling class has dubbed anyone of mixed angelic pedigree—those whose ancestors come from more than one angelic order—as Fallen. The Fallen are treated as the lowest rung of society. In essence, they are the serfs in this celestial version of the Russian Empire, circa 1916.

As with the concept of Original Sin, if you’re Fallen, you’re bad because you’re born that way. So my demon hero, Belphagor, makes the best of his lot. A gambler, a petty thief, and an opportunist, Belphagor has one weakness—the demon Vasily. And no, it’s not much easier to be gay in the Demon District of Elysium than it is in Russia.

At the beginning of the trilogy, Belphagor and Vasily have a stormy history. An airspirit who’s a player in every sense of the word, Belphagor has gambled with Vasily’s affections one time too many. And firespirit Vasily has a temper to match his element. When an opportunity to bring the estranged Vasily back into his life presents itself to Belphagor in the form of angelic Grand Duchess Anazakia fleeing her family’s killer, it doesn’t hurt that a potential fortune is also on the line. Belphagor agrees to hide Anazakia from the usurping cousin who thinks he’s murdered her, and what better way to hide her than to fall? He enlists Vasily, who needs to get out of Elysium for reasons of his own, enticing him with the promise of holding the grand duchess for ransom when it’s time to return her to Heaven.

Of course, nothing goes as planned. Belphagor doesn’t expect the Seraphim to be hot on their trail the moment they arrive in St. Petersburg in the world of Man, and he certainly doesn’t expect Vasily to fall for the angelic grand duchess.

By the end of Book One, The Fallen Queen, the angel and her demon companions have become an unlikely family, their complicated relationships with one another forming a fragile alliance. By the end of Book Two, The Midnight Court, the alliances are strong, and their personal relationships stronger, and with Vasily and Belphagor beside her, Anazakia is on her way to embracing her destiny as the future queen of Heaven.

The final installment of the trilogy, The Armies of Heaven, will test them all as Anazakia confronts her family’s killer and the two opposing armies who would be just as happy to see her dead—one an army of angels, the other an army of demons bent on revolution at any cost. She’ll use every resource at her disposal to fight her enemies, including demon magic and the unexpected power of Vasily’s elemental fire. But it will take the persistence and cunning of the demon known as “the Prince of Tricks” to win this war—and perhaps to win the war of hearts.

In celebration of the release of The Armies of Heaven, I’m giving away prizes to three different winners on my blog tour: a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble or Amazon, a complete set of print books of The House of Arkhangelsk, and a collector’s edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen illustrated by Vladyslav Yerko. Just enter via the Rafflecopter at the bottom of the post. This giveaway is international.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

---

About the author:

Jane Kindred is the author of The House of Arkhangel’sk trilogy and The Devil’s Garden. Born in Billings, Montana, she spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed.

You can find Jane on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and on her website.