War of the Island

They came for his blood. They didn't expect the island to remember. What begins as a quiet island retreat for Jack and Kim becomes a nightmare when mercenaries sent by the Sinclair and Bruce Empires arrive, intent on extracting Jack's altered blood and turning it into a weapon. But the island isn't passive. Twisted by science and memory, its creatures respond to Jack in ways he doesn't understand. As unnatural alliances form and ancient powers stir, he begins to wonder whether the island is protecting him-or reshaping him. Above, Gilgamesh Avians descend like telepathic reapers. Below, something older than war begins to wake. What began as a manhunt becomes a reckoning, where the line between human and something far more alien collapses. The island remembers. And it does not forgive.

Jerry Leake is an Associate Professor of Percussion at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. He leads the world-rock-fusion octet Cubist that performs compositions from his acclaimed 2010 debut CD. Jerry recently released his third Cubist CD, Prominence, where African songs and melodies are woven into contemporary designs. He is a founding member of the world-music ensemble Natraj and performs with Club d'Elf and the Agbekor Society. Jerry has written eight widely used texts on North and South Indian, West African, Latin American percussion, and rhythm theory. He is former president of the Massachusetts PAS Chapter, and was a presenter of his "Harmonic Time" method at a 2011 TEDx Seminar in Cambridge, MA. He has also written over 30 articles for PAS magazine. Sand and Ceremony is his debut novel.