Emily: Introduction to the Battle of the Veil

Emily May Harrison is the main character in the Scroll of Seven series, the first currently named Emily and the Battle of the Veil, written by Karen Michelle Brooks.

With change dramatically entering her life, Emily learns more about a different world, intruding into her own, and then has to explore the premise that ‘thoughts are things’ and how she has or hasn’t got control over them.

The novel introduces Emily May Harrison, her strange birth and mother’s death, her father’s disappearance, the experiences she has in Paradise Beach, where she has grown up with her Gran and friend Sam, and her move towards boarding school in Kingstown, where her access to the world of Aurana really begins.

It is in Kingstown that she meets up with various characters: the sassy, spiky-haired street-kid Josh and his mother Miriam, her friends in boarding school: Morgan and Sarah, who are at her side, supporting her as Emily gathers courage. It is the ‘newbie’ Jessica, who confuses and challenges Emily, that will come to her rescue in (what looks outwardly like) a bookstore that belongs to the mountainous, jolly, odd, long-nosed Edwina.

After meeting Edwina, and finding her book of poems, Emily finds a way through to Aurana where she meets up with what she has long called her Shimmers, characters that have touched her in her dreams and reality in her younger years: Pugly (a phenomenal flyer and teacher), Elvis (a jiggly, wiggly handful) and The Elder (a being of substance). She also becomes aware of the darker characters, those of Admonai (a shape-shifter who usually takes the form of Man, only because his original form is too frightening to reveal), Silenkis (a stuttering serious Snake) and Elgeba (an ugly, bones on the outside, beaked monkey). Admonai and his sidekick, Silenkis, have a way of linking back into the real world of Kingstown through various lost souls (Rupert, a real man that has dived into the darker world of drinking and gambling) via their Circles of Influence.

The plot moves towards the crux where a battle is fought between Emily (her friends and the Shimmers helping her as best they can) and the side-kick Silenkis, with Admonai directing but not engaging, along with the earthly shadows/lost souls intruding, in the bookstore that Edwina owns in Kingstown.