Atlas Fallen

By Jessica Pierce
Cybercrown series #1

Readers of this blog know how much I love Scifi novels. It seems to be the only genre I talk about lately! So you can trust me when I say I know what good science fiction books look like. Atlas Fallen was not one of them: it shoots to the top of any list and fits comfortably in what I would consider GREAT science fiction. Beyond amazing: it’s destined to become a classic.

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One space station.

One throne.

And the girl who holds the key.

Tesla Petrov, daughter of an infamous traitor, no longer lives a life of promise in the Atlas space station’s elite flight training program. Stripped of her military rank and banished to the slums, she now scrapes out a brutal existence competing in illegal robot fights for Minko, ruthless leader of the Red Ashes crime syndicate. But when a wrong move costs her a fight—and a fortune—for the crime lord, Tesla knows her days aboard the Atlas are numbered.

Daxton LaRose isn’t just visiting the station to celebrate the Centennial of the Crown—he’s hunting a terrorist threatening to end a century of peace on Earth. To do so, he’ll need someone who knows the station. Someone willing to strike a deal at any cost.

Someone like Tesla. 

But as the hunt for the terrorist uncovers dangerous secrets from both their pasts, Tesla and Daxton realize that nothing, and no one, is what it seems.

Musings

A hundred years after the nations of the world were united under one crown, that crown is in jeopardy. A mysterious plot threatens to destroy the monarchy, and it all seems to be going down on the ATLAS, a space station in orbit around Earth, strictly divided between the elite and the working class. Tesla, once an up-and-coming flight cadet before she was stripped of her rank, is trying to prove her father’s innocence from treason, an act which has cost him in life. When she meets Daxon, he offers her a way off the station, at a cost – helping him save the ATLAS from whatever plot is about to go down.

Tesla is one of the best YA heroines I’ve ever read. And I’m not even sure why exactly! Maybe it was how much I could relate to her, as she was a character with depth and complexity that a reader can really get to know. Maybe it was her brilliance, as she’s a savvy engineer with a good head on her shoulders. Maybe it was her courage and her drive, the kind of strength that drives her to design and fight in robot matches, or, say, sign up for a terrifying mission which would throw her life out the airlock. There was something about Tesla that just seemed so real that I’m still dying to know more about her.

Daxon is equally fascinating. Though we spend less time in his POV, it’s hard to miss the complexity of his own life. I loved how the author took the trope surrounding his character (trying to avoid spoilers here) and flipped it on its head. His friends, the supporting cast of the book, are fascinating and I really can’t wait to learn more about them in the future books. That, and explore the growing relationship between Tesla and Daxon… Daxla? Texon? Do we have a ship name yet?

None of the plot felt predictable: when you saw it go one way, it would quickly throw you a curveball. I loved the dichotomy of Tesla’s life, able to infiltrate a gala and fight in robot death matches one after the other. The ending was exciting and left me breathless for more. I think we have a new hit on our hands!

All in all, it is an out of this world debut. Skillfully crafted, with brilliant heroes and thrilling adventure, Atlas Fallen is un-putdownable. A masterpiece of Young Adult Space fiction!

 

Alienation Blog Tour + Exclusive Excerpt

Readcommendations

Welcome to the Alienation BLOG HOP TOUR!

Please take your seat and strap yourself in, as we take you on an intergalactic tour. You will be amazed, entertained, and educated. Manoeuvre through the cosmos and be astounded at all you see. Hunt down the hidden words that will get you to your final destination where a one-of-a-kind award awaits one lucky traveller.

We’re here to celebrate the release of Alienation, book two of the humorous Sci-Fi series, Starstruck!

Alienation Large

Sally Webber’s dream is coming true: Zander is back and taking her out for a night on the town–on a planet hundreds of light years away from Earth. 

But when an accident separates her from her alien tour guide, she’s thrown into the seedy underbelly of an insane city where nothing is as it seems. Suddenly lost and desperate to get back home, Sally is willing to do anything to get out, even if it means accepting spontaneous marriage proposals, crashing some fancy parties, or joining what appears to be the space mob. 

All she wanted was some decent interstellar pizza, but now it might be the end of the world as evil nanobots and an out of control AI try to take the universe by force, and the only one who can stop them is missing in action. Sally has no choice but to try to stop them herself–if she can stay alive that long.

Pre-order your copy now!

Alienation is the fantastic sequel to the hit sci-fi comedy, Starstruck by S.E.Anderson.

Today’s word is: Undercity.

In the Dark


And now – the Exclusive Excerpt!

Da-Duhui.

This alien place now had a name: a word I could throw into my mind to classify everything I saw. To make sense of it. Da-Duhui. A city, light years away from my home.

Blayde decided this was the best time to close the window. Instantly, the air in the room shuddered and took a breath, as if a filter had been turned on. I breathed easier, relishing in the freshness.

She jumped down to the floor in a classy superhero landing, then looked up to check her handiwork. Five pairs of feet raced past the window, shouting muffled words.

“Are we… are we safe, here?” I asked.

Blayde shrugged. “Sure, so long as we don’t touch anything else.”

“And where are we?”

“Da-Duhui,” she said, cocking her head sideways. “Are you in shock? You realize we just had this conversation?”

“I got that bit,” I said, glancing around, “but what’s this place?”

“Museum? Art gallery? Could go either way,” said Blayde. “Try not to touch anything. There’s probably more alarms here than there were in that last place.”

“So, you have been here before?”

“M’yeah,” Blayde muttered. She pulled a tattered book from her inside pocket: her journal. She flipped through the pages, a look of intense concentration on her face. Her lips turned to form into a small frown. It was a look I was beginning to think was permanently baked into her features.

“I’m pretty sure we have,” said Zander, forcing concentration, as if that would help him stare back in time and bring up the memories locked in his mind. “I have no idea when, but recently enough that I recognize it. I know it was a good trip, though.”

“I’ve got two lines in the journal,” Blayde said, jamming her finger at the page as if to squash a bug. “Visited Da-Duhui. Avoid for a while. Don’t eat the pizza. And that’s it, so not much to go on.”

Zander rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Hopefully some memory will surface,” he said, suddenly back to his usual cheerful self, “How long ago was it?”

“Before Ja’karon. Now, that was a good time. We should have taken Sally there.”

“You were almost eaten by a swamp-beast, and you tried to sell me into marriage with the earth king. Yeah, that was fun.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” She grinned, slamming her journal shut. “He obviously liked you. And I didn’t get any complaints from you. Anyway, it was much more interesting than Da-Duhui, where the only thing I cared enough to write about is their bad food.”

“This place is plenty interesting,” said Zander, “and most of all, it’s safe. There’s no drama: just a good, classic alien city to show Sally. Harmless.”

Blayde let out a snort, making me wonder just how harmless this place was. If her idea of fun was narrowly avoiding death, I wanted to stay away from the places she gave five stars to on Yelp.

“We just escaped deadly fumes and a gun squad, Zander,” she said.

“But the upper levels are really nice.”

“If we can get Sally there in one piece, yes.”

“Which we will.”

“All this for dinner away from earth?” Blayde looked at me now, squinting in doubt. “You get much better food on her planet. I think. Honestly I wasn’t around long enough to check.”

“This isn’t about the food, Blayde!”

“Then again,” I said, “if you mentioned to stay away for a while, that’s probably for a reason, right? Should I ask…?”

“Ask all you want, but I don’t have an answer,” Blayde said as she stuffed her journal into the inside pocket of her red leather jacket. “You can’t expect me to remember everything. My mind has much more interesting things to focus on.”

“But it is safe, right?” I asked. My eyes glanced at the window the security guards had run past. Had they seen our faces? Would they come looking for us?

The siblings exchanged long looks. Blayde communicated with her eyebrows alone, raising and dropping them as she shifted through a wide range of expressions. Zander seemed to understand her, sort of; after a minute of watching her emote a variety of eyebrow poses, he let out a sigh and broke eye contact.

“As safe as it possibly could be,” he answered. “Crime rate is null on the higher levels. But you don’t have to worry about that: We’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I promise.”

“What Zander means to say,” Blayde interjected, “Is that this is a fun trip, and definitely not business. So, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Remind me, what would a business trip for you two involve?” I asked. Blayde rolled her eyes. Typical. Well, I hadn’t known her all that long, certainly not enough to know what typical was. But it seemed typical enough.

“Let’s find something fun to do,” Zander said, rubbing his hands together with that smug grin on his face that meant something exciting was about to happen. The kind of grin that stretched too wide for his face. He looked like a kid in a candy store.

“First of all, let’s stop standing around this place, okay?” said Blayde, “it gives me the creeps.”

“Something gives you the creeps?” I asked, trotting after her as she walked towards the room’s only exit. “You? The immortal intergalactic space… what are you exactly? Travel blogger? A cop? An assassin?”

She shot me a glare. “I have a bad vibe, that’s all. Give me a break, will you?”

“Sorry, I just…”

Run run run run run!” shouted Zander, snapping my sentence in half, flashing past us in a whirl of black leather. His hand caught mine and tugged, and suddenly I was running after him, an alarm ringing in my ears.


 

Exciting, right? And only 10 days left until the release!

Follow this blog tour starting at your first stop UrbanHype101 and if you get lost in cyber space, come back to UrbanHype101 for the tour map.
There’s something new to read see or hear on each of these stops.

Don’t forget to hunt for that special word and if you find ALL of them, send them to scavengerhunt@bolidepublishing.com and you could win a signed copy of Alienation and a gift pack of unique swag. This contest is open internationally.

16h October Buried In Bookland

Starstruck and Alienation Add

Space Team

by Barry J. Hutchison
Reviewed by Sarah

First book of the new year! I’ve had this book on my TBR pile for ages, saving it for a bad day so it could cheer me up. And it did more than that – this book is a pure delight. It combines everything I love about space travel, crazy adventures, and hilarious comedy, along with a cast of characters you fall in love with from page one. Hold on to your seats – this book is Fonking hilarious.

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Cal Carver is having a bad day. Imprisoned and forced to share a cell with a cannibalistic serial killer, Cal thinks things can’t possibly get any worse.

He is wrong.

It’s not until two-thirds of the human race is wiped out and Cal is abducted by aliens that his day really starts to go downhill.

Whisked across the galaxy, Cal is thrown into a team of some of the sector’s most notorious villains and scumbags. Their mission should be simple enough, but as one screw-up leads to another, they find themselves in a frantic battle to save an entire alien civilization – and its god – from total annihilation.

Musings

So. You’ve got an identity thief forced to work alongside villains and soldiers on what’s supposed to be an easy assignment, just doing a drop on behalf of a prominent interstellar corporation. It’s definitely a recipe for disaster. Cal will do anything to survive, including pretending to be a cannibal, resisting the advances of a wolf, or befriending a lump of sentient green shapeshifting goop. And that’s just the start of his problems.

This was the first book I’ve read in a long time that was laugh-out-loud hilarious. And I’ve missed that so much – I really wish more books were like Space Team. Whether it’s the witty comments, the snark from Cal or any of his compatriots, or the ridiculous situations they get themselves into on the worst assignment ever, it just makes me insanely happy to read it. It reminds me of Guardians of the Galaxy (for the rag tag team of villains aspect), definitely giving off a Terry Pratchett vibe for the humor (on par with Douglas Adams, though less introspective if you hate that) and – oddly – the characters remind of of Brooklyn 99, if it was set in space and everyone hated each other just a tad.

The characters’ complexity also got me. No one is what they seem on the surface. You have the wolf girl who’s oddly attracted to Cal (which at first bugged me, until it became clear why), who seems to have an interesting family dynamic. You have the top-of-her-class soldier, desperate to look good to her commanding officers but doomed to fail from the stars, you have the Mech who can either be the bulk or the brains, but never both at once, and you have a lump of sentient green shapeshifting goop, who by the end of the book is your best friend. I feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface of these characters lives, and I’m dying to know more.

And it’s just so gosh darn clever. So much of this book was hilarious just by how on point it was. The running gags the likes of Arrested Development. The Sci fi references left and right. Cal’s obsession with putting the word space in front of everything, for example. Or his fixation on Toby Maguire. Or the awful swearing. It’s just non stop, pages turning themselves, impossible to put down except when you’re laughing so hard and there are tears in your eyes and you need to stop because you can’t see anything anymore.

Now I’m going to run and grab book 2. You can grab Space Team right here, right now.

Tomoiya’s Story: Escape To Darkness

by C.A. King
Reviewed by SA

Hello bookworms! Sorry there hasn’t been a book review this week yet. Things have been a little hectic on my end of the woods. It involves quantum walks and a pretty annoying flu. But I’ll spare you the details. So, this Saturday, I bring you a short review, for a short book I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

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Taken captive on her wedding day by poachers, Allaynie is subjected to abuse by their leader, Woden. Greed is merely good business to the man and hunting is his trade. He’ll do anything to collect her unique tears for profit, even chase her into darkness.

King is starting a series, and this short book acts as the hook to draw you in. It establishes the rules of her universe, and quite a fantastic myth: how a kind race of talented people could become the refilled and terrible Vampires we know today.

Oh. Did I mention this was Sci-Fi? And that Allaynie is a VAMPIRE SPACE PRINCESS?

The author crafts a brilliantly creative universe, where space travel is common, and vampires are still unknown. She creates a compelling tale which would explain why we see them as we do, as blood sucking demons, when in fact they race is – usually – kind and gentle. How one man’s greed and lies spiral out of control and create a fiction that has persisted for millennia.

It’s a short read, and a bit like a fairy tale. It’s easily a story you could tell around a campfire. It sets the ground rules for the rest of the series, a bit like a cross between a prequel and a prologue – and makes me very excited for what’s coming next.

While the science made me cringe (Astrophysicist here, yipes) this is definitely a fun novella. I believe it can be read as a standalone, and that the series itself will explore, well, Tomoiya’s story, a golden Vampire like Allaynie who’s traveling to a school where she will be safe from the hate towards her race. In any case, I’m looking forward to more!

The Secret King: Lethao

by Dawn Chapman
Reviewed by SA

It’s another self published Saturday! This week I’ve had the pleasure to read an amazing science fiction novel that needs to be in your hands immediately. It’s fast, gripping, complex, and reads like a season (yes, an entire season) of Battlestar Galactica. So if you want some brilliant science fiction, this is the book for you: now let me tell you why.

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Kendro, King of the Aonise, can do nothing to prevent their sun from collapsing, consuming their home planet Letháo in a single fiery blast. Running out of time and options, he evacuates the entire population, setting off into the unknown galaxy in four crowded ships. Under constant danger from their ancient enemy, the Zefron, treasonous dissent seeps into his inner circle. Threatened inside and out, Kendro struggles with who to trust, until a mysterious vision finally brings hope to the distraught King. A new home awaits the Aonise, if Kendro can only unite them long enough to survive the journey.

Their world is dying, and the Aonise must evacuate their planet, heading to the stars in massive ships in hope of finding a new world. But their journey is not without its threats: they are hunted by the Zefron, an ancient enemy who seem hell-bent on trying to destroy them, as well as whispers of treason from within. Kendro. the king of the Aonise and their hope for the future, must protect himself while trying to save his people, not to mention his wife and unborn son. The risks are great, and the journey ahead is not an easy one…

The first thing that hit me about this novel was just how gripping it was. Much like in “The Martian” (Andy Weir), the second the Aonise think they are safe, as soon as one problem has been solved, they are thrown head first into another life or death situation. There is never a dull moment or a lull in the plot. They must work together to save their species, or none will survive. Because of this constant action, the book is incredibly difficult to put down and is addicting as heck.

There are multiple characters to follow, which makes the book read a lot like a show. This brings you to different parts of the ship, and introduces you to many aspects of their culture and customs. They’re humanoid, but in many ways they differ completely from us humans, showing the quality of the author’s world building. For example, every Aonise is born with a birthmark, which differs from person to person and across the houses. Their life forces, if you will, contain actual power: Croex. It runs through their veins and has tremendous potential. It lights their birthmark with raw emotion, meaning their feelings are always on display. This, and the croex itself, binds the people together, the king connected to every single one of his people, feeling their pain and anguish as his own. It’s incredibly how the author has managed to make this aspect of their lives seem so natural to the reader when we have nothing like it here on earth.

It’s a space saga of epic proportions. Not only is there the military aspect, but the life of these characters is studied, we share in their loss and their loves and their joys. We are following in their darkest times and their greatest hopes. It gives us surprising emotion, for a science fiction novel. You can’t help but cheer for Kendro, whose faith in his people is remarkable, even when he knows there are those who wish him dead. Some of the storylines are a little more difficult, darker, like Octav’s for example: he has difficult decisions, with his home life falling apart and his own emotions in turmoil. Life on the run, trying to keep your people safe, is not easy.

All in all, as a Sci Fi fan, I got my fill with this fantastic beginning of an awesome saga. With brilliant world building, tough characters, and great writing, I’m hooked and I can’t wait for more. Hopefully we’ll get the sequel soon!