The author and her creations

The Songs of Loss

3 volumes, 257, 518 and 520 pages

The novels Les Chants de Loss

The Songs of Loss spans 9 volumes, of which three volumes have been written, and the fourth is in progress. They tell the story of Lisa, an earthling lost on Loss who started out at the bottom of the social ladder; broken and enslaved, traumatized, conditioned, believing she had lost everything, she uses her intelligence and courage to win back her freedom in a sexist world as cruel as it is wonderful and exotic. But as a Loss singer, she wields a devastating, irresistible power. A weapon that nothing can stop.

She will become a tool, then the banner of a struggle for freedom, that of some of the peoples of the Seas of Separation. Driven by the ideals of human, social and scientific progress, they were to fight against the omnipotence of the Church of the Divine Council, an overpowering empire and tentacular monster established everywhere, which considered itself legitimate in directing the destiny of mankind and imposing its dogmas.

This struggle will sweep away everything, including Loss herself, who, through her shamans, cannot remain neutral in a conflict that will unveil the astonishing and dizzying origins of a mystery that has endured since the dawn of time. Who are the Lossyans? How did they get to Loss, a world not made for them? And who brings humans from Earth to Loss, and why?

What are the Songs of Loss?

The Songs of Loss is a series of novels, a universe and a role-playing game, of Da Vinci-punk fantasy about a foreign and distant world, which was not made for humans.

Loss is a world where deadly creatures, mysterious powers, forgotten secrets and ancient civilizations rub shoulders with Renaissance science, the technological marvels of geniuses and engineers, the exploits of levitating ships, pulse weapons and early electrical machines, and the scares of early experiments on life.

Loss is populated throughout the lands forming a subcontinent around the Seas of Separation. A thousand years after the Long Winter provoked by the Singers of Loss, which threatened to wipe out all mankind, societies have flourished in some twenty cultures, most often led by city-states. Yet one empire dominates the Seas of Separation: the Hegemony of Anquimenès, fiefdom of the all-powerful Church of the Divine Council. This religion, which has crushed almost all other forms of worship that have become marginalized, imposes its law everywhere by word and military force, and decides what is moral and what is impious.

Only one city-state truly overshadows its omnipotence: Armanth, capital of Athémaïs. The City of the Master Merchants, the haven of scholars and free thinkers, the city of a hundred thousand slaves, the largest and freest city in all of Loss.

“The Songs of Loss is the sum of my worst dreams and my most splendid nightmares. Yes, in that order. Some will say it’s a real role-playing universe, some will say it’s feminist or, on the contrary, sexist, others that it tells a terrible, disturbing, even frightening tale. But if it’s all of these things, and above all if it can’t leave you indifferent, then it’s achieved its goal.

I’d be hard-pressed to list all the inspirations, and you’d be surprised to find in bulk the Dune cycle (Franck Herbert), the Uasti saga (Tanith Lee), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki), or Conan (Robert E. Howard), not forgetting stranger things like the Gaia Hypothesis (James Lovelock), or the Gor saga (John Norman). Add to that various films and TV series (such as Da Vinci’s Demons or Outlander), role-playing games as varied as Animonde and Pendragon through to Shaan and Prophecy, my love of creatures from the Eocene and Cretaceous periods and my passion for the Italian and Venetian Renaissance. I could have talked about my infatuation with science fiction in general, which is very much in evidence in the world of Loss, but that would be discussing the obvious.”

Axelle Bouet.

The author

Axelle “Psychee” Bouet

Illustrator and novelist, lead editor of the tabbletop role-playing game. She got into RPGs around the same time she got into drawing, in 1981, and hasn’t stopped since. Les Chants de Loss, the literary series on which the role-playing game is based and which is still in progress, was born of her fevered imagination, following an intimate discussion with Igor Polouchine. The result is this slightly mad world; the sum, as she likes to say, of “her worst dreams and her most magnificent nightmares”. Axelle has a number of nicknames that reflect her reputation for assertiveness, to put it mildly – feminazgûl is one that amuses her greatly – but the one she likes best, given by friends and family, is “living encyclopaedia”.

Contact & links

Illustrator portfolio : https://www.artstation.com/psychee

Personal blog (french) : https://www.psychee.org/blog/

Commissions, prices & contact : https://www.psychee.org/blog/a-propos/tarifs-commissions-english-2019/

The Songs of Loss, in french : http://www.loss-jdr.psychee.org/

The Songs of Loss, the novels, on Wattpad : https://www.wattpad.com/story/78722854-the-songs-of-loss-book-one-armanth