Brian Bakar

“My friends look at me, but I’m in a distant place, listening to the moan of the wind through the tunnels of Lykos. Smelling the dew on the gears in the early morning. Knowing Eo will be waiting for me when I come home. Like she waits for me now at the end of the cobbled road, as Narol does, as Pax and Ragnar and Quinn and, I hope, Roque, Lorn, Tactus and the rest of them do. It would not be the end to die. It would be the beginning of something new. I have to believe that. But my death would leave the Jackal here in this world. It would leave him with power over those I love, over all I’ve fought for. I always thought I would die before the end. I trudged on knowing I was doomed. But my friends have breathed love into me, breathed my faith back into my bones. They’ve made me want to live. They’ve made me want to build. Mustang looks at me, her eyes glassy, and I know she wants me to choose life, but she will not choose for me.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“They swing together, the Goblin and the Gold, suspended above the swirling crowd that’s now stampeding trying to get up the ladder to the walkway to cut Sevro down, but in their madness they overload the ladder and it bends away from the wall. Victra’s about to launch herself into the air on her gravBoots to save him. I hold her down. “Wait.” “He’s dying!” she says frantically. “That’s the point.” It is not a boy who dangles on that line. It is not a brokenhearted orphan who needs me to pick him up. It’s a man who has been through hell and now believes in the dream of his father, in the dream of my wife. It’s a man I would die to protect even as he dies to save the soul of this rebellion.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“He went through several fortunes and six wives, some of whom he was married to simultaneously. Writing and women were Ned’s great passions, and he pursued both with a vengeance.”
― Paul Andrew Hutton, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West

“Carson passed through the abandoned village, riding to the sound of the guns. Topping a small bluff, he could now see the battle in progress. Carson put spurs to his horse and galloped forward with the rest of the cavalry behind. He had been there before, back in ’48, when Bent sent him to open the trading post. Jicarillas had driven him off and Bent decided to abandon the place. Now he was back to fight the greatest battle of his storied career. Pettis and his lumbering howitzers finally caught up. Before him he saw hundreds of warriors racing back and forth on their ponies, concealing themselves as they fired under the necks of the animals, and behind them on the nearby bluffs were over a thousand more. Carson’s men were outnumbered by at least four to one. “A finer sight I never saw before,” noted Pettis, “and probably shall never see again.” The young officer dismounted before Carson and McCleave and saluted. “Pettis, throw a few shell into that crowd over thar,” Carson casually remarked as he pointed to a group of chiefs in their feathered headdresses haranguing the warriors in preparation of a grand charge.”
― Paul Andrew Hutton, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West