The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper – Spotlight and Giveaway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Isabel Cooper who is celebrating the upcoming release of The Nightborn. Enter the Rafflecopter at the end of the post for a chance to win a set of April 2021 releases from Sourcebooks Casablanca.

Sentinels spend their lives fighting the monsters that prey upon humanity.

As the Traitor God’s army grows and war looms ever-closer, Sentinel Branwyn arrives in the gleaming city-state of Heliodar to ask its High Council for aid. Its youngest member, Zelen Varengir, is sympathetic to her cause, but his hands are tied by his powerful family—and when they demand he spy upon the beautiful warrior, there is little he can do but obey.

But something stronger than blood draws Zelen and Branwyn together, and when Branwyn is framed for the murder of the High Lord himself, the unlikely duo must learn to trust each other if they want to discover the deep secrets hidden in the heart of the city, uncover the real enemies moving against them, and embrace the attraction neither can deny…all while facing down the return of the greatest threat the world has ever known.

Fans of The Witcher and Ilona Andrews will love this epic tale of adventure and romance.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“Lord Rognozi and his wife are dead.”

The words made no sense for a second. Then they took Zelen’s breath away as thoroughly as any of his mother’s lectures or the beatings his father had ordered. Gedo wasn’t putting in nearly as much effort as had gone into the other incidents: he was either very talented or very fortunate.

“When? How?”

It would have been unsurprising for Lord Rognozi to have perished quite naturally and uneventfully, and dimly possible that his wife might not have survived the shock and sorrow of it, though it would’ve run counter to what Zelen knew of the lady. That wouldn’t have brought Gedomir to his bedroom.

“Murdered. Butchered, in fact, late last night. If you want the more sordid details, I’m afraid I didn’t ask for an anatomical report. I’m given to understand that the servant who found them is in a state of shock.” He smoothed an imaginary strand of impeccable hair back from his brow. “And your…envoy…has vanished. As has her very large, very likely magical sword.”

“She’d never—”

Zelen lunged forward, with no notion of what the motion might achieve. Denial simply demanded action.

As he’d so frequently done in their past, Gedomir smiled with lofty derision, not to mention a share of pity. “She has, I’m afraid. You’re welcome to try and convince me that a burglar broke into one of the best-warded noble houses in the city and did nothing but slaughter the inhabitants, or that a servant with years of service suddenly went unstoppably berserk in a manner that didn’t rouse the attention of the others in their quarters.”

Colors faded from the world. Zelen sat silently and Gedomir fell silent as well as Idriel stepped in, carrying a tray of tea and cakes. He put it down in front of Zelen and glanced between him and Gedomir: Shall I pretend you have another engagement?

Zelen shook his head. Even that motion took an almost unsupportable amount of strength. “Thank you, Idriel, that will be all,” he said by rote.

“Very good, sir.”

“It may not be entirely her fault, granted,” Gedomir said. “I can perceive no motive for the action, regardless of what others may think, given what you’ve told me of her nature. The Criwath court, or even subversive agents there that Olwin knows nothing of, may have placed a spell on her for this purpose. Or her experiences in the war may have caused damage that hid until now.”

“If she did it,” Zelen said, “I’m certain that it wasn’t of her own will.”

“I’m certain that you’re certain. And Father and I are prepared to take that into account,” Gedomir said, spreading his hands. The ring with Verengir’s crest, his only ornament, gleamed in the pale light of the autumn morning. “Honestly, the information she can provide is more valuable than any vengeance would be—the Dark Lady can wait on her claim. Father thinks the rest of the council might even see a case for clemency, if the circumstances are right.”

“Does he?”

“Would I speak falsely?” Gedomir’s lips tightened, but then he relaxed. “I understand that you’re…biased, but for once your proclivities may have been useful. There’s clearly more here than simple murder. Father and I are prepared to investigate it and to argue as much in the face of all opposition—once you retrieve the woman, of course.”

There was rock under her cheek and blood in her mouth. Her arms were sticky—probably more blood—and a net of pain wrapped her whole body, fiercest around her right knee and her left eye. Branwyn was fairly sure her nose was broken too.

All of that was comparatively minor. She’d been injured more severely in the past, though not often, and the healing of a Sentinel was already doing its work, pulling bones and muscles back into place. Even the knee, which would likely have crippled a normal person for life, would give her only a few days of trouble. Branwyn knew as much, and none of her wounds troubled her.
She had no room in her mind to worry about them anyhow. As consciousness returned, she searched her memory for the fight that must have taken place and found only blankness, then paralyzing fear.

After the ball, she’d felt uneasy about the Rognozis’ house. She’d gone to get Yathana. From that moment, she remembered nothing concrete: she had a dim recollection of the world spinning, of a sword in her grip and the smell of blood and death, but that was all.

Now she was—her eyes focused, one considerably slower than the other—in an alley, in the early morning, wearing the blood-soaked remains of her ball gown.

Yathana was gone.

Her memory had an enormous hole.

There was blood on her arms, up to the elbows, and she couldn’t feel any cuts there.

What happened? was her third question.

Where’s Yathana? came in second.

The first was What did I do?

***
Excerpted from The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper. © 2021 by Isabel Cooper. Used with permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author During the day, ISABEL COOPER maintains her guise as a mild-mannered project manager in legal publishing. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, ballroom dancing, various geeky hobbies, and figuring out what wine goes best with leftover egg rolls. Cooper lives with two thriving houseplants in Boston, Massachusetts.

Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Bookshop, BAM, or Books2Read.

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Stormbringer by Isabel Cooper – Spotlight and Giveaway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Isabel Cooper whose newest book Stormbringer, the first book in her Stormbringer series, was recently released. Enter the Rafflecopter at the end of the post for a chance to win a copy of the book.

Sentinels spend their lives fighting the monsters that prey upon humanity.

Deep in the wilderness, a lone Sentinel discovers a handsome warrior in ancient clothing, held in an endless sleep—Amris, hero of the world’s last great battle. His discovery can only mean one thing: the Traitor God is gathering his armies again, and everyone they love is in terrible danger.

Amris has been trapped in dreamless sleep for centuries. Now he’s awake…and so, it seems, is humanity’s greatest threat. Determined to save the world from being swallowed by the Traitor God’s oncoming storm, Amris and his rescuer, the fiercely beautiful Darya, must learn to trust each other—and the powerful bond that’s formed between them—as they fight their way through a land swarming with danger to get word back to their allies before it’s too late…

Fans of The Witcher and Ilona Andrews will love this epic tale of adventure and romance.

Enjoy an Except

The world was silent, and that itself told Amris the spell had worked—not that he’d ever doubted Gerant’s skill, whether at magic or elsewhere. It was a different matter, though, to be transported, in the space of two breaths and two words, from the screams and crashes of a pitched battle to utter quiet, save for a single voice.

Because the voice wasn’t Gerant’s, nor any that he recognized, Amris’s reflexes carried him backward several steps and brought his sword up in front of him. He realized that the person who’d woken him was human and not Thyran, and hastily readied himself to defend rather than striking out, but it was a close thing.

The woman hissed and darted backward herself, moving with more than human speed or grace.
She was more than human. That became apparent as soon as Amris saw her eyes, unnaturally bright green and glowing in the dim light. Her skin was paper-white, her braided hair dark around it, and those could be human enough, but the eyes were a different matter.

“Easy, there,” she said. Her accent stretched the vowels out more than Amris was used to, and the words came more quickly, but he could understand her rightly enough, particularly when she held up her hands, palms out. “I’m on your side.”

Anyone could say so. “What side is that, pray?” Speaking felt odd. Gerant’s magic had kept his muscles from degeneration through however much time had passed, so he felt no worse than a little stiff, but just as sound had taken a moment to become words, Amris had to think at first: move the tongue this way for w, the lips and throat so for i.

The woman shrugged. “The side that doesn’t love the Traitor. The Order of the Dawn, the Sentinels… I think we were starting when you—” She waved a hand.

When he trapped himself in time in a desperate bid to stop the murderous warlord. “Yes. Only just.”

Still Amris didn’t lower his sword: the woman aside, there was no virtue in dropping his guard before he knew the situation. He did let the rose fall from his gauntleted fingers, and used that hand to pull off his helmet, a necessary compromise between defense and intelligible conversation.

The state of the hall became clearer to him as he did so—the years’ worth of dust and cobwebs, as well as the silence. The woman’s clothing—plain dark leather pants, jerkin, and gloves over a shirt of brown cloth—was plainer than he was used to, without even the embroidery that most peasants wore. Practicality, given where she was, or ascetism?

“I should tell you two things right off,” said the woman. “You might want to sit down first.”
Amris shook his head. “Best to face it on my feet.”

“All right,” she said. “First, you’ve been…” Another vague wave of her hand. “Stuck. For a hundred years or so.”

She’d spoken wisely when she’d advised him to sit. The knowledge traveled up through his feet as well as in through his ears, making the room spin around Amris, and yet it seemed not to reach his head or his heart. The sweat of battle was still wet in his hair, he still felt his cuts and bruises, and the rose on the floor was as fresh as it had been when he’d plucked it for Gerant.
That reached head and heart both. Gerant was as human as he. Had been as human, rather—in a hundred years, a babe in arms would grow, sire or bear their own children, see grandchildren, and die, and Gerant had been a man in his prime when they’d parted. He’d be long dead by now.
They’d both known that parting might be forever. Toward the end, any farewell might have been the last. Amris had never pictured it taking this form.

“Here.” The woman took a small metal flask out of her boot and brandished it in his direction.
The contents tasted roughly as they smelled. Amris had been a soldier long enough to swallow, nod his thanks, and trust that his throat wasn’t truly on fire. “Strong.”

“I keep it to clean out wounds.” One eyebrow quirked, and her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I’d say this counts.”

“Truth.” A hundred years. A hundred years, and only now had somebody come to awaken him, but the hall was empty otherwise. “Before the second, lady,” he said, “was there another man nearby? There, roughly speaking?” He gestured to the place where Thyran had been standing at the last.

“No,” said Darya, peering at it, and then frowned. “But…wait.”

***

A small, uneven mound of gray powder lay heaped on the stone. Darya knelt and touched it with the tip of a gloved finger, feeling the texture as much as she dared. “Ash,” she said, “and—yes, bone. Bits of it. Wait.” There was a larger shape within the ash, but that wasn’t entirely why she’d stopped. As many shocks as it had gone through, her mind was still capable of calculation. “You’re looking for Thyran, aren’t you?”

The question sounded completely absurd. Thyran had shaped, bred, or summoned an army of things, led them against humanity, and cursed the world to years of barren cold when he’d begun to lose. Thyran was the Father of Storms and Abominations. He wasn’t somebody people looked for.

“Then you know of him,” Amris said, utterly serious.

“Bad children and old wives everywhere know of him. The Order taught us a little more of the real histories.” Beneath the ash lay a long finger, five-jointed, with a black talon at the end rather than a nail. Burial in the ash had kept most of the insects away and held off some rot, but the finger was still fairly disgusting. She grimaced. “Was he human at the end?”

“Mostly, in appearance,” Amris said slowly. He knelt beside her, squinting in the dim light. “Far harder to kill than mortals, or even any of his creatures.” Slowly he breathed out, sending ashes scattering. “And one of his defenses was dark fire.”

***

Excerpted from Stormbringer by Isabel Cooper. © 2020 by Isabel Cooper. Used with permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author: During the day, ISABEL COOPER maintains her guise as a mild-mannered project manager in legal publishing. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, ballroom dancing, various geeky hobbies, and figuring out what wine goes best with leftover egg rolls. Cooper lives with two thriving houseplants in Boston, Massachusetts.

Website

Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Bookshop, BAM, Walmart, or Books2Read.

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Highland Dragon Master by Isabel Cooper – Spotlight and Giveaway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Isabel Cooper who is celebrating the upcoming release of her newest book Highland Dragon Master, the third book in her Dawn of the Highland Dragon series. Enter to win a copy of the book.

Legend claims
When Scotland fell to English rule
The Highland dragons took a vow:
Freedom at any price.

The war for Scottish independence rages on, but it’s only a matter of time before England is victorious. Exhausted and battle-weary, Highland dragon Erik MacAlasdair will face unknown seas to seek the Templar stronghold and claim a power so great it could free his beloved homeland forever.

If only that kind of power didn’t come with such a terrible price.

Daughter of a mortal woman and an ancient dragon, Toinette has never forgotten the proud Scot who once stole her young heart—she’ll gladly fight at his side. But when dark forces leave them stranded on a cursed island, it will take everything they have to defy their fate…and trust the passion that burns within the heart of every dragon.

Enjoy an Excerpt

It had been decades since Toinette had fought with another dragon-blooded. She’d forgotten how appealing it was: as heady and easy to lose herself as in any life-or-death battle, but without the risk of death for her men, and with no need at all to hold back. When Erik staggered from her kick to the knee, she grinned.

Toinette didn’t stop when he recovered himself and used his angle to land an excellent upward punch to her stomach. Though the blow knocked the breath out of her, there was a satisfaction in the impact—even in the pain. This was real. This was solid. She could feel it, with noth¬ing ephemeral or confusing, and she could hit back.

She did. A fist to the jaw left Erik shaking his head. Toinette tried to follow up by sweeping a foot at his ankles, but he pivoted away, stepping nimbly over a fallen branch, and then used the momentum to come back at her with a boot to the thigh.

Ow. Damn.

That one might bruise. She almost laughed aloud. Then she darted back into the fray, throwing an uppercut that landed on Erik’s shoulder.

Before she could pull back, though, he grabbed her wrist, then turned his body with a fluid strength that Toinette admired even as it pulled her weight off-center. Mortal bones might have broken; hers held, but she went flying over Erik’s head to land in a patch of grass, tucking her head just in time to miss a tree trunk.

Erik followed up swiftly. Before Toinette could get to her feet, he was kneeling above her, one broad hand holding down each of her shoulders. He was smiling too. One lip was bloody from her fist, but that only made him look wilder—and more handsome. “One fall for you,” he growled. “Surrender?”

“Piss off,” said Toinette, and whipped her head upward toward his nose.

Erik dodged just in time, but the effort of doing so shifted his weight. Toinette shoved him off and backward; twigs snapped beneath his body. She rolled up to her feet, shifted to fighting stance, and waited.

As she’d thought he might, Erik charged her, shoulder first. If he’d taken Toinette square on, he might have won then—he weighed more, in human form, and was at least somewhat stronger—but she sidestepped neatly, grabbed the hair at the back of his head, and yanked. At the same time, she slammed her lower leg into the backs of his knees. The combination took him over backward.

It was her turn to pin him, and she didn’t bugger about with hands on shoulders. She dropped to her knees on Erik’s chest, sending the air out of him for a change. “Second,” she hissed, “goes to me.”

“Pulling hair,” he said, gasping to get his breath back. “Typical woman. Scratch my face next?”

“If I was truly being womanly, you’d have had a knee in your stones by now.”

“Aye,” he said, and smiled again. “You’ve aged past that, have you not?”

“No,” said Toinette. Looking down into his eyes, feel¬ing the muscles in his chest straining under her palms, smelling his clean masculine sweat, she knew why she hadn’t gone near his groin. It would have been her second target in any other fight—second only because men were quick to defend that location, unless she distracted them with pain elsewhere first—but she’d wanted Erik uninjured in that regard.
She lunged forward. He raised his head at the same moment, and their mouths met with heat and force. All the vital energy of their fight changed in an instant, finding different channels, but the transformation was incomplete. Still they struggled against each other, warring for control with lips and tongues.

Toinette stretched herself out atop the hard length of Erik’s tall body. Her breasts flattened against his chest with exquisite friction. The pressure bordered on pain; she wel¬comed the bright heat of that edge, the clarity of the sensa-tion. A knee on either side of Erik’s hips held her stable and let her feel his cock hardening between them, tenting the cloth of his hose and pushing against her mound.

Clothing was a very stupid idea.

She would have done something about it, but that would have meant releasing Erik, and she didn’t trust him not to take advantage of that. As she’d shifted position, he’d snaked a hand up and around her neck, his fingers long, forceful, and nearer her jugular than Toinette would have permitted from anyone else, particularly anyone whose nails could become claws with a thought.

With Erik, the contact sent tendrils of humming desire down through her body, hardening her nipples and spiral¬ing inward to her sex. She made no move to shake his hand away. When he pressed her head down, crushing her mouth against his, the hint of pain only went well with the plea¬sure, a sharp wine with a rich meal.

Yet she had no wish to surrender. The fight was half the fun.

Toinette dug her fingers into Erik’s shoulders, hard enough for him to feel the nails even through his shirt. At the same time, she pulled back: not enough to stop kissing him—she didn’t want to do that—but far enough to bite his lower lip. She did no damage, but she wasn’t entirely gentle either.

The sound he made was as close to a growl as human lungs could manage. Erik’s hips flexed upward, hard and sudden and involuntary, driving his erection between his stomach and Toinette’s. As the heat in her own sex spread outward, she wondered if she could drive him over the edge still clothed. The thought made her pulse with arousal—and, at the same time, chuckle low in her throat.

Erik was the one to pull back this time. “Oh no, lass,” he said hoarsely. Sweat was beginning to glisten at his tem¬ples, darkening his golden hair, and his eyes were almost all pupil, but he had enough confidence to smile up at her again. “You’re not winning this one.”

Then, with a quick twist of his arms, he rolled them both over.

About the Author:Isabel Cooper lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her boyfriend and a houseplant she’s managed to keep alive for over a year now—a personal best. By day, she’s a mild-mannered editor at a legal publishing company. By night, she’s really quite a geek: polyhedral dice, video games, and everything. She only travels through time the normal direction, and has never fought any kind of demon, unless you count younger sisters. She can waltz, though.

Website | Goodreads

Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, or Kobo

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Highland Dragon Rebel by Isabel Cooper – Spotlight and Giveway

Long and Short Reviews welcomes Isabel Cooper who is celebrating the recent release of Highland Dragon Rebel, the second book in her Dawn of the Highland Dragon series. Enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win a copy of the book.

By wing, by claw
By fire, by death
So long as dragons rule the skies, Scotland will forever be free.

After a long and bloody war, Scotland has finally won its independence. But Highland dragon Moiread MacAlasdair knows peace balances on the edge of a blade, and she will do anything to keep her homeland from falling to English control.

Even if that means escorting a powerful new ally into the otherworld itself…and defending him with her life.

Madoc of Avandos is on a critical mission to cement alliances against the British. Powerful men would kill to see him fail—but as he and his fiercely beautiful warrior fight their way through hostile lands, Madoc is faced with a difficult choice: sacrifice everything for the cause…or let himself burn for the love of a dragon.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“You’ll only have to do this the first time,” Moiread said. She sat tailor-fashion on a flattish stone. The brook at her side rushed loudly, swollen with the spring rains. “After, it’ll just be a matter of saying the words. It’s a compact you’re making, like most spells, though I’ve not heard of anything coming in person to agree. Too minor.”

“It’s rare that they do,” Madoc agreed, “or at least rare that they show themselves for it.”

Magic, or most magic, was a matter of talking directly to the forces of the world: the spirits of those forces in the oldest tales, the demons or angels governing their spheres in more modern lore. All spells invoked, most indirectly. Madoc had never been present for an actual summoning. When he was thinking sensibly, he was glad of that. Everything he’d learned said that even the holy ones would frighten the bravest man.

“Good,” said Moiread, evidently sharing his thoughts. “Here.”

She held out a twig of yew, dark needles and bright-red berries attached. In the last village they’d passed through, Moiread had taken them by a churchyard and stopped long enough to break the twig off the tree, which, as in many villages, grew by the gate.

“Now,” she went on, when Madoc had taken the twig, “hold it up and repeat after me.”

Slowly Moiread began, in Latin as good as any priest’s. “In the names of Gabriel, Amariel, Nargeron, and Almighty God, I call upon you, O powers of the worlds. I invoke you, and by invoking, I command you to grant me sight of the union of the spheres. Part the veil that blinds mortal eyes and give me to see the subtle workings of the world, now and whensoever I should invoke it again.”

As Madoc followed her lead, he felt power gathering. It wasn’t much—as Moiread had said, this was a minor spell—but the earth and the air both shifted, as if he could feel them being drawn slightly toward the yew twig. The twig itself began to feel both heavier and less present. Madoc was half worried that his fingers would go through it. In the sun at midday, it was hard to see, but he also thought it glowed. Moiread nodded. “Now crush the berries. Close your eyes, and smear them on your lids.”

The sliminess Madoc had expected lasted barely a moment. Then it turned to a cool tingling across his closed eyelids and, in another heartbeat, vanished. His skin felt untouched.

“And open.”

Madoc did, and caught his breath. He was no stranger to magic, but never had he been able to see the whole world through such entirely different eyes.

A faint haze hung above the grass and trees, a paler shadow of their natural green. The rocks and road looked normal, though their colors were deeper than they had been a moment ago. Madoc looked to the horses, peacefully cropping new grass a few feet away, and saw that each of them glowed a shade of brown: the steady darkness of wheat bread for Moiread’s horse and a slightly lighter color for Rhuddem.

Madoc raised a hand in front of his face. His fingers shone red, shot through with streaks of silver. He flexed them, and the colors shifted accordingly.

“By God,” he said. “This is truly a lovely art you’ve shown me.”

“Useful, at times. But aye,” Moiread said admittedly, “rather beautiful too, in its way.”

She was beautiful. The spell stripped her of her illusion. Her hair lengthened slightly, her figure swelled and narrowed, and her face became a shade more delicate, so that a young-looking woman in men’s clothing sat facing him. In the world of the spell, a pattern of dancing lights played across her body, like diamonds set onto the crisp blue that washed over her skin.
In this world, her shadow was nothing remotely human. Two vast wings stretched out behind her, the brook running through their shade. When she tilted her head to watch him, the shape of an immense head, on a serpentine neck, separated itself from the larger shadow and turned toward Madoc. The same pattern of lights glittered in the shadow.

Mayhap it would have been sensible for Madoc to fear her then, but he wished only that he had more time to sit and watch her.
“A bit revealing, aye?” Moiread asked, clearly aware of where he was looking. To his relief, she sounded amused. “That is why we don’t generally teach the spell. We didn’t come up with it, but we’ve enough luck that not many know it.”

“Do you care so greatly for concealment?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “It’s no great peril, in my view of things, to be found out. There are already those who know what we are and speak of it with varying degrees of truth. Once more knew, or we were more willing to admit it, or both.”

“What happened?”

“To us? Time and duty. The world gets fuller. A clan turns from hunting to farming, and it’s no’ such great use for its laird to spend his days flying in dragon shape. Less use still in court, and we must go there to be part of the greater world, to lead a clan rather than a tribe in a cave. Our sires have other duties, and we as well. Our foes have magic of their own. Dragon shape is no sure victory.”

“I have heard that,” said Madoc, “and seen a little too. Only ran into one sorcerer myself.”

“We’ve not fought them often, no’ directly. The English magic turns more toward enchanted weapons”—she rubbed her calf, wincing in memory—“ or strengthening castles. Crafty spells.”

“Like the one I’m doing?” Madoc asked, speaking the words that courtesy would have Moiread avoid.

“No shame in taking a weapon from your foe,” said Moiread. “We may have fought the people we learned this from”—she gestured around her, indicating the world revealed—“ or we may fight them in the years to come. I’m still glad to have it.”

“So am I.”

About the Author: Isabel Cooper lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her boyfriend and a houseplant she’s managed to keep alive for over a year now—a personal best. By day, she’s a mild-mannered editor at a legal publishing company. By night, she’s really quite a geek: polyhedral dice, video games, and everything. She only travels through time the normal direction, and has never fought any kind of demon, unless you count younger sisters. She can waltz, though.

Website | Goodreads

Buy the book at Amazon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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