Hermes

Hermes is an epic, character-led, genre-defying, multi-epoch work.

Over its twelve-thousand-year journey, it passes through three distinct and different genres. Fantasy, historical, and speculative fiction, and yet each element is grounded in relatable characters (Erihapeti and Nikau, Eawynn and Edmund, Wynn and Robert and Elizabetha and Jake), who, through their loves, trials, grief, and the greed and rottenness of humanity that beset them, explore the essence of what it is to be human.

2150-Earth is a toxic wasteland. The last human has died. On an abandoned space station, an artificial intelligence, designed to take humanity to the stars, sends a plea for help to a world they have not been able to reach. Forty light years away, an ancient civilisation responds and travels back to humanity’s beginnings in an attempt to lead them away from their dark ending. After the first failed attempt, they send Erihapeti, who comes among a Polynesian tribe in AD 50. She establishes a ‘share’, a connection, with Nikau, the tribe’s noble chief, who is open to her and her message. Will the tribe join them?

This is the story of another world’s attempt to come alongside humanity at significant points in our history and encourage them to take a different path.

EMILY CHANCE  has been writing her blog about her passion, music, a theme which underscores Hermes, for almost two decades. The publication of this, her epic first novel, signals the beginning of her journey as an author, with a follow-up story, Angelia, already written.

Emily is a very keen hiker. So, when she is not writing at her home in the Middle East, she can be found at various points in the year in the Alps of Switzerland, the mountains of New Zealand and the South Island of Japan, reminding herself of how precious and unique our homeworld is.