Borrowing Breath from an Unborn Buddha

von Connie Houston

80 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Reincarnation is not enlightenment. It is the seasonal culling of livestock.In an empire dominated by the Ecclesiastic High Court, divinity is manufactured on an industrial scale and salvation is a commodity bought with blood. Isaac Mercer is a living instrument of this oppressive order-a sin-eater whose dorsal column has been surgically grafted with the Vajra-Centipede, a biomechanical parasite of brass joints and mercury needles. With every agonizing extraction, Isaac absorbs the burning, rancid defilements of dying oligarchs, slowly calcifying his own skeleton into brittle black jade and surrendering his humanity in service of the Nine Lotus Thrones.Isaac's blind servitude shatters when he is summoned to cleanse Eleanor Bennett. Draped in soiled imperial silks and locked in a catatonic trance, the pregnant woman bears shifting geometric mandalas across her distended womb. But where Isaac expects the lotus-paste sweetness of celestial corruption, his palate is flooded with the suffocating ash of tens of thousands of slaughtered heretics. Eleanor is no helpless concubine; she is Sister Tenzin of the crushed Void-Sect. The entity growing inside her is neither demon nor holy savior, but an artificial collective nexus of commodified, discarded souls-a living weapon engineered to halt the cosmos itself.Realizing that imperial chirurgeons are merely using his parasite to measure critical karmic mass before harvesting his spine, Isaac engineers a daring escape into the razor-reefs of the Preta Salt Wastes. Pursued by silent trackers and coded cleaver-drums, every mile across the alkali desert pushes Isaac's shattered body closer to collapse. Each purge of karmic venom permanently fuses his vertebrae into stone, while Eleanor's violent metaphysical contractions bend light and freeze the barren earth into black frost. Worse still is the architect of the pursuit: Grand Inquisitor Francis Thornton, Isaac's own biological father, who consigned his infant son to the vivisection tables fifteen years earlier to fashion the ultimate biological fuse.At the summit of the Mount of Calcinated Sins lies the legendary gateway to the Pure Land. Yet behind the golden veil of imperial doctrine lies no celestial paradise, but a sprawling, automated slaughterhouse where human souls are shredded into prana-vapor to feed immortal despots. Standing between an imperial father determined to crown an artificial god and an unborn nexus that demands total cosmic silence, Isaac realizes that deliverance requires an unthinkable sacrifice.Brutal, atmospheric, and metaphysically audacious, Borrowing Breath from an Unborn Buddha is a breathtaking tour de force of bio-spiritual grimdark and philosophical horror. Seamlessly blending the visceral body horror of Clive Barker with the intricate worldbuilding of China Miéville, this groundbreaking epic invites readers into a shattered world where compassion is weaponized, and the only path to true liberation is to stop the Wheel forever.

• Themen: Belletristik Fantasyliteratur Dark Fantasy
• ISBN: 9798182776639
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 14.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: CONNIE STONECIPHER HOUSTON