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Team Brenda #9 – TIME BOUND

Thursday, 17 May 2012  |  Posted by Brenda Drake
Title: TIME BOUND
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy
Word Count: 64,000

Query:
 
Sixteen-year-old Holly Kimura expects her annual visit to her grandmother in Japan to be just another summer of boredom and sushi, until she meets a mysterious local boy, Tamashi. When he saves her from a gang of thugs at the market, Holly jumps at the chance to get closer to him, hoping to unearth his secrets, and maybe steal a kiss or two. Instead, she discovers his threadbare clothes and strange accent hide a secret that spans centuries. A secret that causes her world to collide with that of Izuko Fujita’s, a girl born over two hundred years ago with her own ties to Tamashi.
Tamashi is a Time Dragon—the last of an ancient breed created to watch over Japan—trapped in the body of a seventeen-year-old boy by an evil wizard. Only the blood of a human girl and an ancient ritual can set him free, but as the wizard grows closer to unlocking Tamashi’s power to rewrite Time, Tamashi finds himself growing more desperate for help.
Now, two girls, two centuries apart, must aid Tamashi to stop the wizard from completing his terrible vision for the past – because if they fail, there will be no future for any of them.


Excerpt:
There was nothing quite like the smell of tuna to set the mood for a first date.
Holly stood at the edge of the farmer’s market and wrinkled her nose. Usually the scent of yuzu and fresh chestnuts spiced the air, but today was Wednesday. Fish day.
Not exactly the day she would’ve chosen to meet up with her crush, but evidently guys either didn’t mind the smell or didn’t pay attention to that sort of thing. She hitched up her ponytail and wrinkled her nose at the tables covered with ice and slimy octopus. Fish mouths gaped at her, full of razor sharp teeth, but it was nothing compared to the looks some of the stooped old vendors shot her. They gawked as she passed – their quick judgment of her easy to read in their drawn brows and cold eyes.
She was only half-Japanese. An outsider. Though they were too polite to say anything, she knew what they were thinking. Hafu. Hapa. Half-breed. And now that she was back in Japan for another summer, she had to get used to the place all over again. It always felt like trying to remember which buttons to mash on a video game she hadn’t played in years. Except there was no reload button in real life if she screwed up.
“Buy a kimono!” one of the vendors shouted at her. Holly shook her head and kept moving, skirting around tables full of weird anime figurines, cheap lacquer boxes for the tourists and oddly shaped vegetables.

Filed: Misc

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