DARKWEORLD

About the Book

Cousins Cully and Mark Caliburn disobey their parents and camp overnight in the courtyard of a deserted castle.  Too late, they discover that fifty years earlier their ancestor, Dreogan, was hanged in that very courtyard for the murder of his father.  The boys witness a ghostly reenactment of the hanging and are chased through a portal to Darkweorld, the Celtic Land of the Dead, by a band of troglodyte visitants from beyond the grave.  There, they encounter Awd Goggie, a feisty Yarthkin, who tells them that they cannot return to earth unless they possess a talisman, called a Druid's egg, that is kept the catacombs beneath Erchyll Castle, home of Pwyll, Lord of the Dead.  They enlist the aid of Awd Goggie, of their dead ancestor, Dreogan, and of Cú Chulainn, a Legendary Irish warrior, and set off on foot across a harsh and alien land in search of the elusive Druid's egg.  The odds against the quest are formidable because unspeakable creatures from mankind's forgotten past lurk in the deserts, forests, and mist-shrouded sloughs that lie between them and the Druid's egg.  Erchyll Castle sits atop a pinnacle protected by sheer thousand-foot-high cliffs on all sides.  Once inside the walls, the boys must snatch the amulet from beneath the noses of Lord Pwyll, his mistress, the sorceress Morrigan le Fay, and of their otherworldly children, Anghrist and Anghrydd.  During their adventures in Darkweorld, the young Caliburn cousins learn a terrible truth about themselves.

About the Author

Godfrey Tucker was raised in New England and educated at the University of Miami. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he has worked as a SEAQUARIUM diver, a juvenile court probation officer, and as a Senior Social Scientist for a government contractor. He lives in southern Florida with his Rottweiler Cú Chulainn and his cocker spaniel, Leibchen. Darkweorld is his first published novel.