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Pub date March 19, 2025

ISBN 978-9528800255

Price $27.95 (USD) Hardcover, $17.95 Paperback, $9.95 Kindle edition

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Set in the eighteenth century during Britain’s age of expansion, Harju-Autti’s excellent novel follows Captain Julius Hawthorne, a veteran Scottish seafarer tasked with a royal mission to the remote Andaman Islands. Joined by his fourteen-year-old son, Peter, and their faithful cat, Michi, Julius braves storms, shortages, and the unrelenting demands of command and arrives at the island. But he soon finds an unsettling truth: a curse from the dragon Drakor, branding each child with the date of their death. To lift it, he must face peril, legend, and the unsettling question of whether destiny can be changed.

Harju-Autti takes this eerie premise and renders it with surprising tenderness. The novel asks haunting but fascinating questions: how would lives unfold if the hour of death were known from birth? Would love, ambition, and choice look different? In the Andaman Islands, those fated to live long are burdened with responsibility, while those with shorter lives are indulged—a system that provokes resentment, acceptance, and uneasy balance. The story sweeps swiftly from sea storms to mythic encounters to the deepening father–son bond, while its reflective currents draw readers into questions of mortality and meaning. The result is both a swashbuckling fantasy and a thoughtful allegory. Readers of historical fantasy who crave both excitement and substance will be gratified.

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