Pym’s Key
Karen Heard
Type: Beta project
Genre: Fantasy, literary
Word count: 99,300
Warnings: Swearing
A formless Gatekeeper, stirred into self-awareness by a single question, must play a mysterious game in reverse, travelling back through three lands that mirror the stages of life: childhood, adulthood, and old age. The creature hopes to reach the start and discover what it truly is before it changes too much to return to the nothing that it came from.
What's this?
Pym is the Gatekeeper of the final gate in a game that promises the answers to all life's questions. In a world of three lands that reflect the different ages of life (the mutable nature of youth, the magical stretches of adulthood, and the dark confusion of old age), a trail of hidden puzzles and secret doorways leads to Pym’s gate.
Pym begins to question what this game really is and who they are. They abandon their gate and begin to play the game in reverse, travelling back through the lands of life to find out where it all started and what it all means. Pym hopes to find their answers before they get too lost in the challenges of the journey to ever return.
Karen Heard writes dark speculative fiction with a literary, existential slant and enough humour to lighten the mood.
She's drawn to books that play with language and ideas. Kazuo Ishiguro, Erin Morgenstern, N. K. Jemisin and Ursula K. Le Guin are among the authors that have inspired her.
Her short horror, science fiction and fantasy has been published in anthologies and placed in competitions.
This is her first full-length novel. She aims to send it to agents once it’s been reviewed by people who tell the truth, to iron out the chinks, which is where you come in.
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