Books

All the following books are in Polish, traditionally published.

Novels


Olga i osty, W.A.B., Warszawa 2016.

This is a standalone novel set partly in contemporary Poland and partly in a magical dream world. It makes liberal use of fairy-tale symbolism.

Synopsis:

Olga is thirty-three, single, lonely and broke. One winter evening, she tries to rescue an injured cat and ends up passing through a portal into a magician’s home, where she unexpectedly gets hired as a housekeeper.

The magician lives in the Otherworld, a dreamlike alternate reality ruled by the mysterious Thistle Queen. Olga gradually discovers some surprising links between that world and her own. The story twists and moves back in time: we see Olga taking care of her severely ill mother, her brief encounter with an artist who was later reported missing, her troubled teenage years and her childhood. Painful events from Olga’s past and her adventures in the enchanted Otherworld are all part of a puzzle she has to solve to reclaim her life and relearn love.

Olga i osty weaves ordinary life, dreams, memories and fairytale motifs into an exquisite storyline not unlike Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. It can be read as a psychological novel with a symbolic key, a coming-of-age story or simply a quirky, enchanting tale with as many twists along the way as a winding forest path.

Genre: magic realism
Word count: 73 131

The Darkgleam series

Teatr węży [The Snake Theatre] is a dark fantasy series about the outlawed sorcerer Anguish (in Polish: Krzyczący w Ciemności, literally "Screaming in Darkness"), set in the Darkgleam universe. The first novel, Dwie karty [Two Cards], was published by a small press that unfortunately went bankrupt a year later, so the two subsequent volumes, Pośród cieni [Among Shadows] and W mocy wichru [Windblown], had to be published by a different publisher. Actually, to make things even more complicated, the paper versions were released by one tiny indie press and the ebooks by yet another one! Several years later, to my great joy, all three volumes were successfully re-released by the large publishing house Rebis. A fourth volume, Śpiew potępionych [The Song of the Damned] appeared in print in June 2019. The fifth and final volume, Czerń nie zapomina [Sable Magic Never Forgets], will be released on July 14, 2020.

Synopsis:

Until a century and a half ago, two kinds of magic existed in the world of Darkgleam: silver and sable. But after a curse rendered countless sable sorcerers insane, sable magic became anathema. Those in whom the sable Gift awakens are now known as vipers. Feared by ordinary people and hunted relentlessly by the silver sorcerers, they either perish or learn to live as outlaws. 

Brune Keare, better known as Anguish, has a soul as deeply scarred as his face. He awoke one day in the city of Shan Vaola, ragged, wounded and stricken by amnesia. After discovering that he possesses the sable Gift, he gradually embraces his new identity. But as his powers grow, so do the dangers he faces.

The Snake Theatre follows Brune’s exploits: from struggling to survive in Shan Vaola’s underground slums to battling demons and silver sorcerers. Attempts to recover his lost memories prove more perilous than expected. His fate becomes entwined with that of fellow outlaws even as sinister figures from his past return to threaten them all, and insanity, a sable sorcerer’s greatest fear, is frequently just a step away.  

Teatr węży t. 1: Dwie karty, Wydawnictwo Ifryt, Lublin 2011; Rebis 2017.
Teatr węży t. 2: Pośród cieni, Agencja Wydawnicza Solaris, Stawiguda 2013; Rebis 2017.
Teatr węży t. 3: W mocy wichru, Agencja Wydawnicza Solaris, Stawiguda 2013; Rebis 2018.

Teatr węży t. 4: Śpiew potępionych, Rebis 2019.
Teatr węży t. 5: Czerń nie zapomina, Rebis 2020.

Genre: dark fantasy

Word count:

74 870 (part 1)

70 113 (part 2)
137 490 (part 3)
96 882 (part 4) 
104 903 (part 5)

For the record, the old edition looked like this:

Story collections:

Po stronie mroku - Sumptibus/Oficyna Wydawnicza RW2010, Poznań 2012

This is a collection of stories about Hell, ranging from adventure fantasy to magic realism, with the tagline "Hell has many faces". After being rejected by several large publishers, it was initially released by a tiny indie press as an ebook and later, with a different cover, as a "proper" paper book. The translated stories Bread and Blood, The Sand Ritual and The Street Artist all come from this collection.

Między otchłanią i morzem - Wydawnictwo Ares, Katowice 2004

My very first book - a collection of stories about the outlawed sorcerer Anguish, most of which had appeared earlier in sf & fantasy magazines.