G.P. Rice ’17 Writes Debut Cozy Fantasy Novel

The book: Aetheria on Earth (Brenton Point Press LLC) follows 12-year-old Aisla, a curious young girl living on the remote, wintry isle of Makepeace, whose quiet life takes an unexpected turn when she encounters three magical beings from the distant planet Aetheria. After agreeing to be their human assistant and helping them recover two powerful magical objects, Aisla finds herself drawn into an adventure that reveals shocking connections between her home and a wider world shaped by war and mysterious forces. Set during the Christmas season, Rice’s ’17 fantasy debut novel explores themes of friendship, loyalty, and found family through a whimsical story of magic, discovery, and a young heroine’s great adventure. 

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The author: G.P. (Gunnar) Rice ’17 was born in Providence, Rhode Island and studied English at Princeton. He first began writing novels while living in Washington, D.C. Rice founded Brent Point Press LLC, an independent publishing company based in Rhode Island to publish. He now lives in Newport, Rhode Island. Aetheria on Earth is his debut novel.

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

It all began, whichever way one looks at it, with a lighthouse. Not with what is called a working lighthouse. Nor, strictly speaking, with an inhabited one. (Habitation of them all having ended so very long ago.) But with a broken lighthouse, and what is more, with an abandoned one. Though not in that way, no! Not simply left like so much else to run itself. No, this was a real abandoned light house where it all began, a more than solid foundation of stone carved into a cliff by the sea. 

There was nothing broken in it but the light. But, as that was all it was good for, it was as good as all broken in the opinion of many a productive-minded townsperson down through all the ages. It had ceased its operations long before any of them had ever been born, or long before any of their mothers had ever been born, or long before even any of their grandmothers, too. For, indeed, it had ceased all its operations long before even any of the other lighthouses of this world, once so many, had ceased being lonely little free retirement homes for odd little misanthropic seamen or odd little benevolent spinster ladies.

Why, in truth, it had been snuffed out well before even the recording of history had really begun. But, as it seems it was still in operation when word of mouth was the only history and fable a way of life, there did come down about it one odd story, which proposed to explain how it ever got to be so very broken as it is.

It has been said by some that when it was most needed, when a great storm went rushing in like an army of the dead out of the sea and had almost swallowed up the whole hill on which it stood, this fiery beacon of light shrunk down into a tiny flame and, after a short while, went out forever. 

That is about all that is known about this light in a state of semi-operation. If even that can be said to be known, which has only ever been recounted with a thousand variations by as many speakers. 

What is more known, however, is its longstanding history of immoveable inoperation. The people of the planet to which it was the beacon and the entrance and the livelihood of their livelihood — though not a single one of them knew it — nonetheless all considered its fate to be curiously tied up in their own. And, as no owner or operator of the light could be anywhere found, having likely abandoned the spot at the very first sign of a malfunction for some more profitable purpose, it was soon decided that, it being all equally their own responsibility, or at least all equally in their own interest, they would as soon as possible bring it down. 

Even the baker — who, it might be said, of any possessed the least in the way of a motive, people needing with or without it to abide by the rule of appetite — could yet however not help himself but think that, though the people needed bread in any case, they might need more with it gone. 

And so it was said that the baker was about them all on that day intended for its destruction. There he stood beneath it, with his bread cart and horse and himself passing round his wares as if it were a market day or a Sunday after church, so very many of his fine patrons being on that bright May morning themselves about the strange structure by the grey rocks and along the green fields, like so many fattened geese assembled. 

However, so far was his interest soon perceived to really lie the other way — having had such a great trade at their expense that day — that it was not long before it was by some of them suspected (once it was by all of them understood that the light was almost immoveable and would take many meetings of them all even to make it budge) — then was it whispered that maybe the baker was its true owner and had found out some new-fangled way to stick it there forever.

But, as there had not been one bit of progress on the way to its destruction, there was not the least bit of a consensus as to how it had been built. The bricklayer could swear by his trade it was made of brick, which only looked to be white because it had been painted. The stone carver for his part could swear almost as well it was made of a sort of stone, of white granite perhaps, snatched up from out of the bowels of the sea. And even the woodsman could swear by the sign of the cross it was made as much of wood as that artifact. Though, these climes being of a colder sort from those where it had been so innocently planted and so infamously replanted, he thought this more likely a type of birch. But the blacksmith, alone holding up his ear close to it and rapping his knuckles down its strange smooth almost sleek white sides (and hearing as he did, he said, the faintest echo and vibration run through it), he alone swore on his life it was a sort of steel.

“A sort of steel?” piped up an inquisitive voice from the crowd. 

The blacksmith was still standing up in front of them all, clicking his fingers along its smooth side and feeling, in addition to this, how cold it was, and so said only, “By my best guess, yes.”

“By my best guess, you are a fool!” returned that same ill-tempered old man, who unfortunately for them all was their sheriff-mayor. “A lighthouse made of steel: ridiculous!”

But then that sheriff-mayor began to laugh and in that way which got all the rest of them going, too. Until the whole crowd, pointing up and calling out, “Fool! Fool!” stayed the blacksmith’s hand. So that he, stepping down from among his fellows, who were now all laughing too, walked off to the tree to which his horse was tied, and getting up on it, went riding off into the far green country looking very much like he might never return.

Soon after, there sprung up a strong sense in some of them that even if this uncivil smith was not of sound mind, still he had been of sufficient use to them all never to be made such a fool of again. But the past being the past, it was soon by almost all of them forgotten: and the lighthouse left alone for a while, to be an enigma on the landscape for all to look at but for none to know. 

Until many years later, when that same old sheriff-mayor, now on his deathbed, appointed some of the saner craftsmen who had been there that day to go up again looking closely about the sides of it for the smallest indication of some way in or out or some other surer sign of habitation. For which exam almost all the crowd returned, to talk, gander and make funny faces at one another while the crafty looked. So they sat round the base of it waiting out a whole day, a whole week, a whole month in wonder at what they might soon learn. But it being at last noticed there was no door, crack or crevice to be found anywhere round the whole supernaturally smooth outside of it, it was soon decided, that whatever it was, it could never be made of any use to any of them, nor be fitted out to accommodate some new public charity-house within, and so would be far better knocked down than seen to go on slowly tumbling off into that frightful sea. 

And so for several days a large group of the sturdiest young lads was by the new sheriff-mayor (himself a sturdy young man) ordered and assembled to try nearly to the breaking of all their backs — this same age of theirs being still that of the horse and cart — to horse and cart it all away. 

But this was soon found to be all in vain. For not only was the lighthouse neither horsed nor carted away, but these same men were themselves in that way brought back to town, having fallen one by one into sudden exhaustion at the sheer impossibility of making even by their strongest efforts even a single crack appear anywhere in the strange smooth white outside of it. 

Nor, however, had their lesson been learned. For in the next age too, of the hacksaw and wagon, when the ocean trade somewhat declining, but the blot upon their landscape still remaining — when the men of this next age but of this same cast of mind at last agreed something must be done about it, all thought now instead of horsing and carting it away of sawing and wagoning it so, but soon found their means to be of as little use, as were those of their grandfathers.

Nor was it to be the fate of the age of the ocean liner or of the iron cable to fit within its other great works the much greater accomplishment of a prescient demolishment of this light. For, a large ocean liner, being once by an iron cable stretching out across the sea very brazenly attached round the base of it, was even so by the slightest tug almost broken in half and would have sunk had it not at once given up and gone back—it seemed rather sulkily — to its safe little harbor. 

Nor was it to be the fate of the age of the rail car or of the steel cable, to carry off that old light upon its back, along down its narrow winding way. For, the very rail car which ran by it carrying goods up from the docks, was once diverted from that most productive course by its own operator and secured by a steel cable to it. Yet to his fear and shame almost at once the whole train car was pulled up from off its tracks and into the sky without even the slightest budge.

And though in the next age the bulldozer certainly had his go, and rammed, and rammed his way on into it; still, it was no more to be his fate or that of his close friend, the motor-truck, to finally do in this light than it was to be that of any future craft of humankind, in all the long years of its existence.

There did, however, in the course of all these ages, spring up in time behind it another light, a wider and a taller — for it had to peep up over this one — if only to show that though the past plainly exceeded the present in both durability and beauty, it would now be exceeded only by excess. And in the view of many a productive-minded townsperson, this newer light did exceed it in almost every way. And though of course there were some, who, whenever this view was expressed in private, always recanted from it with their own general wish to see all the world stay put (or, better yet put back) still, the specter of this new light staring down at them all did in the eyes of everyone seem to take something ineffable away from the scene. Which else would have been, which else might have only stayed, that little old broken light, out on its little old broken pile of stone. A whole world unto itself, about to ride off away on the always-stirring, unsettled, stormy sea.

Excerpted from Aetheria on Earth by G.P. Rice. Copyright (c) 2026 and published by Brenton Point Press LLC. Published with permission of the author.