I want to care about the afterlife, but in this moment, barely care for the life I’m in.
“Something’s wrong,” Tim says to himself, “It’s not working.”
Only now realizing I can’t formulate answers, only drift between questions, Tim resorts to internal panic.
The next few moments are lost to me. In my daze, I think about rejoining Maya once Tim figures out the hiccup behind my death. I think if I see Royce, I might punch him in the head. Anything to distract from my shell being ripped open, and darkness pouring from the back of its hairline.
When Tim returns over me, it is as a haze. His words are hollow, telling me I could be like this for a while, and need to be seen by a doctor.
But, as he stands to alert someone to the situation, something stops him. Looking up to where my guardian angel only stood a second ago, he is gone.
Where Death promised to bring me help, there is no sign of him. The bathroom light glares above me, and there is no shadow nearby to dispel what little I can see.
I just want to die now. It seems I’m not even properly allotted that privilege. All I can do is wait for the man who calls himself Death to return, if he ever does.
Surely, this is an ending worthy of only monsters.
At the very least, the debate is settled.
Acknowledgements
Writing thank yous for any book becomes a repetitive exercise in formality after a while. Thankfully, I did not have to bother as many people the longer I wrote, becoming more self-sufficient as a writer, editor, graphic designer, self-publisher and typesetter.
So I’ll say this. If you’ve been supportive at any point, thank you. If you are supportive, thank you. If you don’t read the books and still follow my work on social media, thank you.
Series History
LEVIATHAN is the first entry in a new series of books, building upon the lore, excitement and mythology of the series it takes foundations from.
THE BOOK OF DEATH, as its five instalments are collectively known, follows the events of OLIVIA & HALE, the conclusion to the series of the same name.
You do not need to read the previous series to understand or enjoy LEVIATHAN. This recap, however, may not explain recurring characters to their fullest extent, taking away from some of the minor cameos throughout the book.
What follows is a brief history of the OLIVIA & HALE series, where major concepts like the Shroud, Timestream and idea of Death as an entity were founded. The first series was based on a poem by the same name, where the two title characters were pulled into a realm of purgatory called the Shroud and forced to play its host’s mad game of reincarnation. At the end of that poem, Hale was tricked into becoming the new Death and killing Olivia. Her sleeping body laid on a stone slab, disguised as Reaper - their captor’s only known name. A voice in the vicinity taunted Hale to stab the figure using a ceremonial dagger. When Hale removed the mask, it was Olivia, not Reaper, suffering the wound in her abdomen.
The game which they had endured consisted of twenty-eight reincarnations to earn their freedom. Using a device called the Timestream, and another device called the Anchor to hold them in the basin, Olivia and Hale had to endure birth to death the aforementioned number of times.
At one point, Reaper transferred the Anchor’s power to a human soul named Ariel to impress his prisoners. Upon becoming the new Death, Hale attempted to drown her, and she respawned in the real world.
After the twenty second incarnation- making up the first novel Leonard the Liar, in which Olivia lived and died as Skylar Bates- Reaper panicked at the prospect of the duo’s success. He separated them, sending Olivia against the grain of time.
Under the impression Olivia was dead, Hale continued on. His friend, however, was suspended in the past- reincarnated as Nancy Whitaker, becoming mother to Harper and Charlie. When Hale was tricked into murdering Olivia, this was her current incarnation.
The second novel Mercy Road follows Nancy’s daughter Harper after her passing from the real world, as the young girl rescues a woman held prisoner in her neighbour’s basement. This woman, known to Harper as Grace Hawkins, is later identified as Ariel; the human Anchor. Mercy Road ends with the trial of the man who held Grace prisoner and Grace, who is prone to strange visions from the past, channeling Harper’s dead mother.
Following these events, Olivia wakes in the poem Olivia’s War, told by Reaper of what Hale has become. Unaccepting of her friend’s transformation into Death, she confronts a bitter Hale on a nuclear submarine in the short story Reunion.
In Founding Fathers, the third novel, Hale manipulates a convicted felon into starting white nationalist uprisings across the United States, with the town of Haven, Washington as its epicentre. Using social media, this leads to riots against immigration policies in major metropolitan areas, while citizens of Haven rise up against the core movement. When the story is resolved, Olivia chastises Hale for trying to destroy the socioeconomic fabric of society.
In the sequel Dead’s Haven, the same town is later black marked for its role in fostering white supremacy, and is eventually taken hostage by armed militants hellbent on seceding from the United States government.
Many years after Mercy Road, we meet Tim Hawkins, Grace’s real world brother, suffering the loss of his wife. Capitalizing on this, Olivia impersonates her ghost, escorting Tim and an orphan named Caleb Cross to the town under seige. As he becomes drawn into the conflict between the town’s occupiers and those working to free it, Olivia reveals her true identity to Tim, along with the revelation Caleb is Hale reincarnated after she tried drowning him in the Timestream.
Defeated by Hale’s dark form at Haven, the town is destroyed and Tim is forced through a portal to the Shroud.
In the final novel Olivia & Hale, Tim awakens in the Shroud. At the same time, Olivia pulls her daughter Harper and several other recurring characters into Hale’s realm to bring an end to their conflict once and for all.
Too weakened to present as her true self after Haven, Olivia takes the dual forms of Skylar Bates, her twenty-second reincarnation, and Evie, a presence that communicates with Harper by calls on random telephones throughout the Shroud.
Instructed to bring Skylar to Chicago from the Shroud’s version of New York City, Harper and her companions arrive in Valhalla, where the Timestream resides. Tim and Harper are reunited with Grace and Olivia, just as Hale comes for the Anchor.
After he takes Grace, the remaining survivors confront Hale in Manhattan, defeating him. The locket which sustained Olivia’s ghost passes to Harper, and Olivia fades into obscurity. Tim becomes Death in place of Hale, and Grace remains with him in the Shroud.
It is here our story begins, in a world where Tim Hawkins became Death, Harper Whitaker an immortal. While the book you are about to read is Tim and Ramona’s story, it is one piece of a puzzle which will lead to an entirely new supernatural realm.
Thank you for buying LEVIATHAN, and I hope it interests you to want to try other books in the first series, or return for book 2, due out this fall.
Nicholas Gagnier
Ottawa, Canada
June 16th, 2019
About the Author
Nicholas Gagnier is the author of the Olivia & Hale series, as well as its sequel series The Book of Death. He is also the author of the young adult series The Chronicles of Vee.
He lives in Ottawa, ON.
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