The Underloam · Book One
The Remembered Street
Some cities forget on purpose. Edda Mercer remembers what they buried.
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Maren Holloway
Writes hidden-world fantasy
Maren Holloway writes hidden-world fantasy about the things we lose and the cost of getting them back: drowned cities still lit from within, a found family each missing a different piece of themselves, magic that always asks the user to pay. Her debut series, The Underloam, runs to seven books.
- Magic is forgetting.
- Nothing comes up for free.
- Wonder with a wound underneath.
Biography
A marvel and a grief, in the same room.
Maren Holloway writes hidden-world fantasy about the things we lose and the cost of getting them back. She is drawn to stories that put a marvel and a grief in the same room and refuse to let you have one without the other: drowned cities still lit from within, a found family each missing a different piece of themselves, magic that always asks the user to pay.
Her work lives in the fog between older-YA and adult fantasy: weighty enough for readers who want real stakes and real loss, hopeful enough to believe a wound can be carried instead of hidden.
Her debut series, The Underloam, follows Edda Mercer, a girl in a drowned port city who can pull the forgotten back up out of the dark, and who learns the hard way that nothing comes up for free. Across seven books it asks one question from a hundred angles: what do we choose to carry, and what does it cost to set it down?
What you can count on
The signature under every Maren Holloway novel
- 01
Magic is forgetting
One original engine, stated plainly: what the world forgets thoroughly enough doesn't vanish. It sinks, whole and breathing, into the Underloam.
- 02
Nothing comes up for free
To raise a buried thing, Edda carries its weight in her own skull. Every reclaiming cracks the surface, and something starving climbs up after.
- 03
Wonder, and the wound under it
Never a marvel without its cost in the same breath. The drowned street is beautiful. It is also a grave with the lights still on.
- 04
Found family, each missing a piece
The warmth is real, and it is load-bearing. These are people who fit together precisely where they are broken.
- 05
Loss you carry, not loss you hide
Real stakes and real grief, never graphic. The question is never whether it hurts. It is what you choose to do with the weight.
- 06
Churchyard, tide, archive, grave
No fire, no prophecy, no wizard school. The palette is fog, silt, brick, and cold water, and it never breaks character.
Books by Maren Holloway
In the catalogue →Available now
Coming soon
The Underloam · Book TwoThe Ledger of the Buried
To learn the craft that buries the world’s grief, she has to join the order that would bury her.
Coming soon
The Underloam · Book ThreeThe Blank Locket
Some griefs are kept in a locket. Some are kept in a person.
Coming soon
The Underloam · Book FourThe Drownmarket
Everything the world throws away has to go somewhere. Somewhere, someone is selling it.
Coming soon
The Underloam · Book SixThe Great Hush
At the bottom of the world lies the one thing the order buried so deep it forgot it had buried anything at all.
Coming soon
The Underloam · Book SevenThe Unforgotten
The world offers two ways to survive a loss: bury it, or drown in it. Edda Mercer is about to find a third.
Coming soon
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Contact
Reader mail for Maren Holloway: marenholloway@readnovastory.com. Rights, press and permissions: contact@readnovastory.com.