A Champion is dead and a God has been taken from the game. While the remaining Gods seem to be no closer to discovering what it is they are playing for, they now begin to question the motives of the Creator. Will there be a winner of this epic game, or will the one responsible for it all simply watch on as the Champions move closer to their inevitable deaths?

A new world has been created the world of Dark Swell. Six strangers have been chosen; brought together from different worlds to compete in a game. Each will be given a realm; a land to nurture and make strong for their chosen race. A realm from which they must eventually choose their Champion. They are the Gods of Dark Swell and they are playing for a prize beyond imagining, in a world brimming with magic. Yet none of them know what the prize will be; and they have no idea what they must do to win it.

The idol has been found. As Brindel, Mortinan and Mendina make their way out of the plains, the fates of Kabir and Linf still look grim, while the purpose of the idol remains a mystery. The Gods discussions intensify as their champions continue to be hunted by monsters born from nightmares, when suddenly the Creator appears before them again. What he has to tell them will leave them all speechless. A change none of the Gods saw coming, but a twist that will alter the game completely. It is time for the Gods to playagain.

Sex, gender and sexuality have played an important role in shaping the culture of surfing and are central themes in the study of sport and movement cultures. Rooted in a rich precolonial history, surfing has undergone a modern transformation shaped by visual culture, commodification, sportization, mediatization and globalization, arguably all linked to sex, gender and sexuality. Using the physical culture of surfing as its focus, this international collection discusses the complex relationships between surfing, sex/es, gender/s and sexuality/ies. This book crosses new theoretical, empirical and methodological boundaries by exploring themes and issues such as indigenous histories, exploitation, the marginalized, race, ethnicity, disability, counter cultures, transgressions and queering. Offering original insights into surfing’s symbolism, postcolonialism, patriocolonial whiteness and heteronormativity, its chapters are connected by a collective aspiration to document sex/es, gender/s and sexuality/ies as they are shaped by surfing and, importantly, as they re-shape the many, possibly previously unknown, worlds of surfing. Surfing, Sex, Genders and Sexualities is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport or gender and sexuality studies.

“Lester Higata knew his life was about to end when he walked out on the lanai behind his house in Makiki and saw his long-dead father sitting in a lawn chair near the little greenhouse where Lester kept his orchids.” Thus begins Barbara Hamby’s magical narrative of the life of a Japanese American man in Honolulu. The quietly beautiful linked stories in Lester Higata’s 20th Century bring us close to people who could be, and should be, our friends and neighbors and families. Starting in 1999 with his conversation with his father, continuing backward in time throughout his life with his wife, Katherine, and their children in Hawai‘i, and ending with his days in the hospital in 1946, as he heals from a wartime wound and meets the woman he will marry, Hamby recreates not just one but any number of the worlds that have shaped Lester. The world of his mother, as stubbornly faithful to Japan and Buddhism as Katherine’s mother is to Ohio and conservative Christianity; the world of his children, whose childhoods and adulthoods are vastly different from his own; the world after Pearl Harbor and Vietnam; the world of a professional engineer and family man: the worlds of Lester Higata’s 20th Century are filled with ordinary people living extraordinary lives, moving from farms to classrooms and offices, from racism to acceptance and even love, all in a setting so paradisal it should be heaven on earth. Never forgetting the terrors of wartime—“We wake one morning with the wind racing toward us like an animal, and nothing is ever the same”—but focusing on the serene joys of peacetime, Lester populates his worlds with work, faith, and family among the palm trees and blue skies of the island he loves.