Profile: Cassie Oakman

About This Author

Cassie Oakman was born in Sussex, and after living and studying in Paris, Oxford and various other places, she is now settled in a peaceful village only a few miles from where she grew up. She divides her working life between writing and teaching, and spends her leisure time with her family. The Skywatchers series is a sequence of novels set in a world where fanatics are using aggression and terror to impose their own religious beliefs. The peaceful moonfollowers and sunservers tread a precarious path between dying for their faiths and betraying their principles. Although there is no way to return to the gentle life that has been swept away from them, an unlikely group of people, from a politician to a dancing slave girl, from a merchant to a retired bard, are summoned together to try to defeat the bigots and bring about a newly tolerant world. Although set in an imaginary land, far from ours in both space and time, the need to overcome intolerance and create a world order based on something more enlightened than the use or abuse of power, weaves a metaphor that resonates with our own age. Brightly Shines the Darkness (Book 1 in the Skywatchers series) was published in January 2013. Distant my Companions (Book 2) was published in August 2013. Sombre Glows the Sun (Book 3) is due for publication in April 2014. For a change of pace from working on the Skywatchers series, Cassie is writing a suspense novel set in the twentieth century, and a collection of short stories. For further details about Cassie and about the Skywatchers world, see www.cassieoakman.com

This Author's Books

Dhoban and his sister Serin had expected to have several more years’ training before becoming priests, but when their mentors are killed, far from home, by religious zealots, they do their best to take their places. It troubles the village elders that the....
ISBN: 9781782996682
Published: 9 July 2013
"I don't think these fanatics understand about the cycle of lives. Their haste, their destructive energy, their whole attitude, is that of a gambler who wagers all on one throw of a coin. It’s my impression that they think we only have this one life." The....
ISBN: 9781782997450
Published: 24 July 2013
The first two books in the Skywatchers series followed the paths of a community of moonfollowers during and after the purges initiated by sun-worshipping aggressors from the Tarkan Empire. In Sombre Glows the Sun, the third book in the series, we meet som....
ISBN: 9781784072711
Published: 24 December 2013
The people who are needed to usher in a new, more enlightened world order are all coming together: priests to discern the will of the spirits, politicians to devise strategy, pathfinders to plan the way, and healers to mend the wounds of the past. But the....
ISBN: 9781785101663
Published: 9 October 2014
Book 5 in the Skywatchers Series “I thought it was going to be like taking on a challenge; something exciting, that would make us feel special. It isn’t, though, is it? It’s going to be dangerous, and sorrowful, and lonely.” At last there are native sunse....
ISBN: 9781786103017
Published: 4 November 2015