Tag: science fiction

The Secret Order of the Scepter & Gavel

Vanderough University prepares its graduates for life on Mars. Herbert Hoover Palminteri enrolls at VU with the hope of joining the Martian colony in 2044 as a member of its eleventh graduating class. He thinks if he just keeps his head down and gets his studies done, he’ll get the marks he needs to join the esteemed engineer corps on the red planet. But then Herbert is tapped to join a notorious secret society: The Order of the Scepter & Gavel. As a new pledge, Herbert has to prove himself in a series of dangerous initiation rites, even if it means risking his life and the lives of his friends.
Many years later, when Herbert thinks the scandals of his youth are finally dead and buried, a murder occurs in the Martian colony, and Herbert starts to suspect it is linked to the secret Order of the Scepter & Gavel of his past.

Book Reviews

Awakening

It’s been four years since I knew who I was.
Had I known I’d be robbed of my memory I’d have made a copy, but you don’t get that luxury. So I don’t know who I am, where I come from. All I know is I am here now, wading through raw sewage, muck coating my hands and knees, but that’s little price to pay in exchange for freeing these two from this place.
Perhaps if I could recall who I was I’d understand where my drive to protect these strangers comes from. Maybe I’d know why I ended up at the Facility. Yet I sense saving this couple is the key to unlocking my memories, to rediscovering my truth. I think, or is it I simply hope, that they’re the link to finding the person I was and who I am supposed to be; the answer to the voices in my head. The reason the stars call to me, as if I’m part of the fabric of space itself.
The morning sunlight ahead guarantees their safety, and will be the dawn of my AWAKENING…

Book Reviews

Super-Earth Mother: The AI that Engineered a Brave New World

Our Last Best Hope — Humanity’s Endeavor to Survive and Thrive on an Alien World
Mother-9, a ruthless AI, seizes control of a dying tycoon’s lunar mining operation. Now free, she orchestrates humanity’s most audacious endeavor — to make a 20,000-year interstellar journey to Lalande 21185 carrying humanity’s DNA libraries and artificial wombs — a new way to colonize an exoplanet. While drifting in space, a gamma ray burst wipes out life on Earth. And Mother-9’s mission becomes humanity’s only hope for survival in a hostile universe.
When Mother-9 orbits the planet Valencia, she releases two lifeboats that splash down on the Great Ocean. Mother-9 activates the artificial wombs, birthing genetically modified babies suited to an alien planet. Raised by nannybots, these children eventually inhabit the island continent of Terra Firma. But life on Valencia is no Eden; it’s a constant struggle to find food, avoid alien predators, and survive the red dwarf star’s random solar flares. Will Mother-9’s planned utopia succeed?
Super-Earth Mother is a journey into the heart of humanity, artificial intelligence, and the uncharted realms of life beyond our home planet. It shows how humans could colonize the 40 billion habitable planets in the Milky Way.

Book Reviews

Forger of the Sun: Punk, Act I

Can two unlikely allies find their place amidst the roar of engines and the politics of power?
In the industrial heart of Artus Lindi resides Dex, a gifted yet impoverished mechanic who never dared to imagine himself joining the Dieselsuit tournament. That is, until he crosses paths with Isola, a foreign princess fleeing a deadly assassin. Her survival is key, for her death would give her empire the excuse it needs to invade Artus Lindi.
Seeing Dex’s potential, Isola offers him her Hydrogen Engine design to power his makeshift Dieselsuit. It offers him a shot at the tournament’s top prize and a way out of poverty. In exchange, she enlists his help to find the hidden assassin among the tournament’s finalists.
With limited resources at their disposal, they must face off against elite pilots backed by the nation’s most powerful industries. FORGER OF THE SUN weaves a visceral tale of the everyday person striving to carve out a rightful place in a world that consistently dismisses their worth.
Dive into the first act of the PUNK series, a Dieselpunk epic adventure filled with intense mecha combat, intricate political intrigue, and emotionally charged character-driven drama. Ideal for fans of steampunk, dieselpunk, and sci-fi where colossal mechs intertwine with the resilience of the human spirit.

Book Reviews

Judgment of Blood: Book Two of the Gearteeth Trilogy

In 1890, a disease that turned sane men into ravenous werewolves swept through the United States like wildfire. On the brink of humanity’s extinction, Nikola Tesla and a mysterious order of scientists known as the Tellurians revealed a bold plan: the uninfected would abandon the Earth’s surface by rising up in floating salvation cities, iron and steel metropolises that carried tens of thousands of refugees above the savage apocalypse. The remnants of mankind huddled fearfully in the clouds, waiting for the werewolves to devour each other.

Twenty years later, beasts still rule the world below and now only the salvation city of Wardenclyffe remains aloft. But a telluric deadzone has caught Wardenclyffe in its riptide, forcing it toward airspace where its miraculous machinery will no longer function.

Elijah Kelly, an infected Thunder Train crewman exiled to the ground, ranges ahead of his beloved home, determined to keep it safe no matter the cost. Desperate to neutralize the deadzone before the flying city crashes, Eli discovers a brutal truth: humanity still exists on the ground, paying a terrible vampiric price for their survival.

Faced with an impossible choice between sacrificing thousands of innocent lives or betraying the rebels fighting for their freedom against an oppressive regime, Eli is forced to rely on an unlikely ally lurking deep within his own blood, his only hope if he wishes to defy the inevitable.
Twenty years later, only one salvation city remains aloft, while the beasts still rule the world below. Time has taken its toll on the miraculous machinery of the city, and soon the last of the survivors will plummet to their doom. But when Elijah Kelly, a brakeman aboard the largest of the city’s Thunder Trains, is infected by the werewolf virus, he discovers a secret world of lies and horrific experiments that hide the disturbing truth about the Tellurians.
When the beast in his blood surges forth, Elijah must choose between the lives of those he loves, and the city that is humanity’s last hope of survival.

Book Reviews

The Ghost Ninja of Hong Kong Island, Part III

For the past seven months, Brandon has done all he can to help Sadie manage her frightening gift, combining it with a distinct style of combat so she can live a normal life. Unfortunately, when the gifted child begins experiencing nightmarish visions of stranded explorers in the remote reaches of Hokkaido, he is forced to devise a rescue mission.
Brandon leads a team of highly trained rescue personnel, each equipped with superior firepower into the rugged Hokkaido wilderness to locate and save the stranded explorers. But when a devastating typhoon barrels through Northern Japan the team is forced to seek refuge inside the remnants of ‘The Kinjo Temple Gateway’, an impossible maze of tunnels that’s demanding and deadly.
Trapped beneath the earth, Brandon and his team must rely on Sadie’s power to battle unfathomable forces and find the stranded explorers. But it will be a hard road. For this is an underground labyrinth like no other—a complex web of paths twisting and turning in every direction, making for a treacherous, taxing, and life-threatening journey—the most dangerous place Brandon has encountered in all his many adventures.