Book excerpt: To save a world, he must risk his own. While testing fireworks, orphan Sam shoots down a dragon and her knight. A dying emperor begs his wife, Maria, to abdicate and avoid the ensuing power struggle for their failing empire. With her mind bound to the human who shot her out of the sky, Eliana upsets her father’s plans for returning their people to their home world. Rifts, invisible gates between worlds and a source of magical energy, connect the fates of Sam, Maria and Eliana. Sam’s destiny is to seal the Rifts. Unbeknown to Maria, her dead son and heir to the empire, Sam, still lives. And if the Rifts close, Eliana and her people can’t return home. Set in a world where animals host human souls, machines weave magic and people aren’t who they claim to be, Rifts is the first book in a three-part epic fantasy series.