Becoming a powerful demon's familiar might be the best thing ever. But what's the catch?Rory Soletsa is a 17-year-old in a low-magic dimension. He is a student at a magical academy who is supposed to find a familiar. But he doesn't want something trite. He wants to study magical combat and dreams of finding a familiar that can fight alongside him. When he encounters a shape-shifting demon, he asks if the demon will become his familiar but, instead, the demon captures him as her familiar to enter him in an illegal familiar-fighting tournament.The demon undertakes a three-month-long plan to secretly train Rory. She requires him to improve his physical fitness. She teaches him offensive and defensive magical techniques. They also visit Japan where the demon introduces him to aikido…as a way to get him to recognize that, rather than confronting opponents directly, he should avoid their strengths and turn their strengths against them.Rory has numerous harrowing experiences while registering and qualifying for the tournament. He is humiliated and tormented by demons while being inspected. But, after everything he's suffered for, he finally reaches the tournament.What will happen then? Steven D. Brewer has been a fan of science fiction and fantasy stories for as long as he can remember. He still remembers getting scolded for not reading chapter books in fourth grade because he was avidly consuming The Hobbit late at night, by flashlight under his covers. And he probably got his copy from his older brother and most important mentor.As an author, Steven identifies diverse obsessions that underlie his writing. His early interest in natural history, life science, and environmentalism he learned from his father, an ecologist and ornithologist. He attributes seeing his mother study German for his abiding passion for languages that led him to major in Spanish (as well as Biology) and subsequently learn Esperanto and use it for international correspondence and travel. His fascination with Japanese culture grew from writing haiku and haibun in Esperanto. And his mania for information technology and the Internet led him back to graduate school where he earned a Masters in Earth Science and a PhD in Science Education.His scattered interests led to an eclectic employment history. He did farm work and food service growing up in southwest Michigan. He has worked as a large-animal caretaker, an archeological faunal analyst, a hunter of the fastest lizards in the world, a gas-station attendant, a bilingual teacher's aide for a migrant-worker education program, and an edutainer with live animals and a portable planetarium. For the past quarter century, he has served as a non-tenure-system faculty member in higher education.Steven currently teaches scientific writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his extended family.
